In this episode, we sit down with Catherine Styles and chat about her experiences with having a baby midway through her PhD. We dive deeper into how she prepared her research for maternity leave, how she manages the workload of her PhD and childcare, the parallels between mum guilt and imposter syndrome, and Cat shares her tips on how to stay sane as a parent who is also an early-career scholar.

Find Cat's Twitter here: @pea_green_boat

Catherine Styles is a part-time PhD student at the University of Bristol. Her current research focuses on female monsters in early modern literature, looking at what it is about women that men are so afraid of. Other research interests include witchcraft & the supernatural, fairy tales, and gender & sexuality in early modern literature. She has a one year old son called Harry who was not only born mid-pandemic, but also part way through her PhD.

If you like our content, support PhD Pending by heading to our Buy Me A Coffee page and donate: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/phdpendingpod. This episode of PhD Pending was written and produced by Anne Mahler. Get in contact with PhD Pending on Twitter and Instagram @phdpendingpod or via email to [email protected]. Jingle by Scott Holmes ("Our Big Adventure," licensed CC BY-NC 4, available at www.scottholmesmusic.com, free for use, copy and redistribute in any medium or format, under Creative Commons).