As of 30 September 2013 I have been registered on the MA by Research course at a rather good university in the Midlands :) *happy dance*
For a short while it looked like I wasn't going to be able to take up the offer, as I was originally registered to do the MRes, which has a small taught component, and my employers changed their minds about letting me have a day release (would have been doing 37 hours in 4 days instead of 5). My department have been awesome however and helped me to find a solution which turns out to be even better than the original plan!
So, I am studying part-time, meeting my tutor in school holidays when I can travel to her, or meeting via Skype otherwise. This is good!
I'm working on an analysis of wills from the Testamenta Eboracensia examining paternoster beads / rosaries (PN/R). Aim is to try to understand how the owners viewed the objects - as jewellery, a devotional object, to be left to men / women / children / servants / superiors? Yes, I have a lot of questions, but I'm hoping to continue this study into doctoral research, so I don't expect to answer even half at this stage.
Currently I'm working on a list of 21 wills which I know contain mentions of PN/R and logging basic data on a spreadsheet.
Next stages:
- Decide how the data is going to be logged in Access (TGO will be writing it for me thankfully!)
- Complete a literature review which can then be beaten into being an opening chapter
- Work out what the chapter structure will be (no idea at present)
- Arrange to got to York to view a few of the originals to see how faithful the TE transcriptions are to the originals
- Decide if / how many wills other than my pre-selected 21 I will analyse for comparison.
Well, should keep me busy for the next few years at least! :)
Oh, and I'm off to Quadrivium IX too, which is pretty scary for me, as I'm still heavily in the Imposter stage of my academic life..
Anyways, back to data extraction!
