Painting our way through balancing academia, research, and personal life | The PhD Sketchbook

What does a PhD journey look like when you paint it rather than write it?

On a hot summer evening, Louise and Tooba meet at Louise's flat somewhere in London to reflect on balancing life and a PhD while painting our thoughts on canvases. Their conversation meanders along the tricky pathway of finding and maintaining the balance between pursuing PhD degrees, consistently striving for career development, and managing personal and medical commitments. 

You can see the artworks they created during this episode on the UCL IOE student blog, and on the IOE Instagram account.
Full show notes and links: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2026/jun/painting-our-way-through-balancing-academia-research-and-personal-life-phd-sketchbook

More IOE Insights podcasts: https://uclioe.info/podcast
UCL Institute of Education: https://ucl.ac.uk/ioe

Music featured: "Magic Escape Room" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/