It’s the final episode of Season 3!  It’s gone so quickly and I am so grateful to the wonderful guests who have made it so awesome!

 

And, talking of awesome guests, who better to create a big finish for this series than Melanie Smith?!

 

Dr Melanie Smith is Reader Emerita at Cardiff University School of Law and Politics and an independent expert and research consultant in the broad field of European constitutional and administrative law, with a specific focus on enforcement of EU law across a broad policy spectrum. Melanie has provided expert advice as an independent consultant to the European Parliament (JURI, LIBE and IMCO Committees) over the last 10 years on a variety of topics from centralised Commission enforcement of EU law, to the desirability of the Administrative Procedures Act, the effectiveness of member state enforcement activities and recently on the future Digital Services Act. She is also founder of Academic Coach, which is a coaching service that offers courses and 1-1 coaching for PhD students and faculty, and workshops for Universities on all aspects of the writing process.

 

In this episode Melanie talks about her journey out of banking and into academia and then out of academia and into consultancy and coaching!  

 

Melanie describes how she worked with the European Commission and the European Parliament as part of her PhD research and how that contact developed into the role of expert advisor.

 

Melanie encourages PhD students to remember the value of your expertise outside of academia and the impact it can have in the ‘real world.

 

She also talks about her work as an academic coach and how important it is to receive good quality mentoring as part of your PhD journey.

 

Here are Melanie’s contact details:

Websites /Social Media: www.academiccoach.info www.drmelaniesmith.org

Twitter: @Drmelsmith & @AcademicCoach5

Facebook : @coachacademic

 

Keep in touch with all the info on special events at by signing up to ‘Notes from the Life Raft’ here