Moving forward – staying put: Social science postgraduates’ Covid-19 (im)mobilities

Abstract

When the Covid-19 pandemic began, social science postgraduates (PGRs) in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland were instantaneously prevented from undertaking their carefully planned in-person fieldwork. The pandemic disrupted many PGRs’ temporalities, often resulting in both academic and existential immobility. During Covid-19, PGRs reacted in varying ways to the tensions of wanting to move forward with their PhD toward their future selves, yet often experienced staying put. This article explores the influences on several PGRs’ attempts to (re)gain control over their temporal (im)mobilities. It also analyses the impact of PGRs’ social and academic (im)mobilities resulting from Covid-19 on their (un)well-being. The research reflected on how Covid often interrupted PGRs’ hoped-for futures as their spatial immobilities became bound up with (im)mobilities related to their PhD. The article also directs attention to how ethnographic apprenticeship must encompass strategies to prepare PGRs for their PhD work as an aspect of their future-making.

Introduction

Lockdown. Social restrictions. Restricted mobilities. Temporal academic precariousness. I recall vividly 23 March 2020, when the United Kingdom’s (UK’s) prime minister announced the first draconian Covid-19 lockdown and social-distancing restrictions. People in the UK were able to move if they were essential workers (Marshall, 2023), or were restricted in their mobility, permitted to leave home only for the most essential of essentials (Salazar, 2021).

This article considers the perspectives of social science postgraduates (PGRs) in the UK and Republic of Ireland, who faced additional immobilities – the curtailment of their carefully planned face-to-face research – and how that impacted them academically and psychologically. In contrast to many studies of mobility, the article explores PGRs who did not physically move from one place to live in another. Rather, PGRs experienced their restricted mobilities as ‘emplaced immobility’, as discussed later. The analysis considers how PGRs’ experiences of existential (im)mobility were exacerbated and intensified by their disrupted temporal aspirations (Johnson-Hanks, 2002), that is, the hopefulness they placed in achieving a doctorate and the opportunities it might afford. The process of researching and writing a PhD is often the foundation for PGRs’ future selves. I discuss an under-analysed feature of this process, that is, how degrees of uncontrol over a doctoral project can cause heightened existential, temporal uncertainties and associated unwell-being. Hage’s temporal conception of ‘existential mobility’ is relevant as it encompasses: ‘forward movement in time. This is why it is often associated with conceptions of “the future” rather than the present or the past’ (Hage, 2005: 471). Hage foregrounds the future in his perspective on mobility, which is discussed in relation to PGRs’ temporal anxieties.

Temporal anxieties arise when a student’s current, unpredictable and uncertain circumstances cause their future imaginaries to be viewed as precarious. The future is important in my pandemic research because, for students, it was – for varying durations and to varying degrees – uncertain, potentially precarious and experienced more intensely in the present. Newman’s (2021) perspective of temporality is useful in understanding the precariousness of a student’s future academic self due to disruptions to their PhD. He conceptualizes temporality as a ‘continuum where the future is supposed to be under the control of the present’ (Newman, 2021: 117). This article considers how the perspective of temporally mediated existential (im)mobilities sheds light on the way many PGRs experienced their uncertain futures. PGRs’ futures were often anxiously foregrounded in their present when, for various durations, their PhD was not under their control. The article discusses how some PGRs struggled to control their futures, desiring their PhD to be moving forward. From PGRs’ perspectives, control, academically, refers to the practical and temporal aspects of their PhD, that are entwined with its existential qualities. The practical aspects of control included, for example, when a student felt that they were able to contribute purposefully to their PhD, whether in relation to their fieldwork, writing up or other activities related to it – that it was moving forward. The temporal aspects of control relate to how a PGR was able to look to their future with relative certainty in the present. Similarly to Adey (2006), who argued that ‘there is never any absolute immobility, but … relative immobilities’ (2006: 83), control is relative because a PhD will be influenced, for example, by external and subjective dynamics, as the various PGRs interviewed for this article experienced.

Moving forward was how a PGR felt when their PhD was progressing purposefully, and this encompassed temporal dimensions – their current and future self-identity. ‘Staying put’ was how several of the PGRs interviewed perceived their PhD when it was subjected to various delays; these were often anxious periods, because the time available to complete an optimal (revised) thesis was shrinking. The temporal dimensions of staying put can be viewed as ‘stuckedness’, that is, ‘a situation where a person suffers from both the absence of choices or alternatives to the situation they are in and an inability to grab such alternatives even if they present themselves’ (Hage, 2009: 100). I will frame PGRs’ Covid predicaments through stuckedness viewed as the relative lack of temporal control which affected their academic mobility.

It is also necessary to highlight the (un)well-being consequences for students and their PhDs, particularly when control over their research was taken from them for periods of uncertain duration. It is worth noting that Covid-19 did not disrupt a research project only at one point in time but on multiple occasions. As the pandemic lingered, varied unexpected obstacles impacted PGRs and their research. I write this article with intimate and shared empathy with PGRs whose research was interrupted, suspended or that required wholesale revision due to Covid. My original research project was not just interrupted, it had to be abandoned and a new PhD topic devised while the clock-time to completion ticked mercilessly away. Like other PGRs, I was given a timeline extension, but only many anxious months after the pandemic had begun.

I will consider PGRs’ perspectives as they experienced the momentum of the forward-ticking clock-time of a PhD timeline and the tensions associated with having less time to complete their project ¹ due to additional unexpected delays caused by revising a research project to be Covid-compliant. Salazar’s perspective of existential (im)mobility is relevant for PGRs’ Covid experiences because it encompasses control. He defines existential mobility as the ‘micro-level … focus on individual experience … quality of life … and of being in control of their lives’ (2021: 22). The unprecedented power dynamics of control during Covid-19 were expansive – governmental biopolitical mobility restrictions and the corresponding spatial constraints, additional institutional oversight and the willingness of research participants to take part in a research project. Students’ physical mobility restrictions meant that the usual supportive academic relations were also disrupted.

I will focus on the following: how did PGRs experience and react to their disrupted temporalities and existential (im)mobilities during the pandemic, particularly when their control over their PhD was uncertain? The article discusses PGRs’ Covid predicaments and their impacts – and students’ attempts to regain control in the face of unexpected disruptions. The crisis of the immobilities experienced by PGRs ushered in by Covid-19 had more impact than simply restricting their movements. I will consider the mobility impetus of a PhD in terms of a student’s hoped-for future self. Due to the influence of a PhD on PGRs’ future selves and potential (un)well-being, it is necessary to encourage the discipline of anthropology, and other social sciences, to reflect on and initiate discussions around strategies to prepare students better before they begin their doctoral projects, and to take better care of them during the process of research and writing up.

I do not write this article in an academic vacuum. Nor do I single out PGRs as people who experienced the pandemic in more significant and disruptive ways than other members of the public. However, PGRs did experience a range of disruptions during the pandemic that were not necessarily shared by other members of society. I shine a light on how Covid amplified and intensified many PGRs’ anxious circumstances, some of which existed pre-pandemic, while others were unique. I am mindful that during the pandemic other people experienced the mental health effects of job disruptions (Wels et al., 2023) and the unequal impact of Covid on ethnic groups (Kapilashrami et al., 2022; Katikireddi et al., 2021). Furthermore, essential workers were not fortunate enough to work from home (see Gaitens et al, 2021; and for my experiences, Marshall, 2023). Crises can reveal and amplify existing inequalities and expose new ones, and this allows them to be analysed, as people become more sensitized to them, and conscious of them.

Emplaced (im)mobility and existential (im)mobilities

Mobility studies include a wide variety of theoretical and ethnographic analyses of the topic. For example, the physical mobility of migrants (Grønseth, 2013; Mankekar, 2015; Svašek, 2012), tourism (Bloch, 2020), digital mobility (Cook, 2022) and imagined futures and immobility (Kleist and Jansen, 2016). Early in the pandemic, Marshall and Kyratsou (2020) collaborated to publish aspects of Kyratsou’s ethnographic research and Marshall’s theoretical perspectives on the Greek government’s pandemic mobility restrictions on asylum-seekers sheltering in reception centers. The various social and physical immobilities imposed during Covid-19 attracted copious amounts of scholarly attention (notably the special issue of Mobilities – Adey et al., 2021; see also Burns et al., 2021; Martin and Bergmann, 2021) and post-pandemic mobilities offered additional theoretical opportunities (Cresswell, 2021; Salazar, 2021). Adding to the Covid and mobility literature, in relation to the temporal dimensions of PGRs’ (im)mobilities, their enforced restricted movements are foregrounded here. Turner argues how confinement ‘is often more temporal than spatial, and what seems at stake is the individual’s ability (or not) to imagine, or propel themselves toward, a future’ (in Jefferson et al., 2019: 6). Spatial considerations of confinement cannot be separated from the temporal aspects which I analyse through my conceptualization of ‘emplaced (im)mobility’. I define emplaced (im)mobility as being where a person remains in their usual residence with constrained temporospatial immobility, externally and subjectively experienced, which can have profound impacts on their existential mobilities and well-being. Emplaced temporospatial immobility links to an aspect of mobilities to which only cursory attention has been paid so far – that is, well-being. I discuss the narratives of some of my PGR interlocutors to encourage practitioners of anthropology to pay more noticeable attention to the (un)well-being effects of the apprenticeship to the discipline (and afterwards) and to change their current practices (see Jenkins, 1994, and anthropological apprenticeship). During ‘normal’ times, a PhD can be stressful, leading to overwork and unwell-being. The (un)well-being of many PGRs was starkly revealed during Covid, particularly when their existential emphasis was focused on their PhD – impeded and impacted by Covid disruptions – rather than on themselves and their well-being.

Existential immobility, academically staying put, was due to a halt in PGRs’ face-to-face fieldwork and the associated delays, mostly – frustratingly – beyond the control of many of the PGRs. Often students struggled anxiously as they waited for control over their PhD to be given back to them. Mobility is often negotiated, or under the control of other regimes, be they social, political, bureaucratic, or otherwise. Tsioulakis (2020) writes of ‘the imperative of control [which] becomes more urgent’ during times of crisis, where there is ‘a postponement of the present’ (2020: 133). Delays or postponement to a student’s PhD in the present, often caused heightened anxieties, which made reclaiming control a matter of urgency. When a student’s PhD was temporarily under the control of another person or organization, this was commonly experienced as stuckedness, existential immobility, which hindered forward movement, academically. Perry Mann, ² a UK student researching health inequalities, told me of the impact of applying for and waiting for various bureaucratic decisions related to his PhD and Covid restrictions: ‘I felt that I was stuck in the quagmire for so long, I wasn’t getting anywhere … [and] my mental health was shot.’ Perry’s situation was not unique as various PGRs experienced a downturn in their mental health. He emphasized the long duration of his laborious struggle to move forward with his research – a struggle that was mentally tiring for Perry and other PGRs. For some students, feelings of stuckedness arose during periods of lingering uncertainty, experienced as time drawn out, and there was no definite point in the future when decisions could be made. The remedy for PGRs’ stuckedness was regaining control, and being able to make the choices that established some forward momentum with their PhD. When control of a PhD project was regained, many students’ sense of lost time lingered on, indicating how the past forms a temporal dimension of the present, extending into the future.

There are times when a student understands and accepts that their PhD will be controlled by others. Yet students’ project design, institutional approval and ethics review had already been sought for their original research. The pandemic meant that additional reviews and approvals were necessary, adding unexpected delays to a finite timeline. Also, ethics boards were under pressure to review additional, revised research projects, which sometimes meant that a PGR’s research approval was further delayed. Delays in their PhD intensified many PGRs’ academic uncertainty, adding extra precariousness to their already anxious, hopeful imaginaries. One notable new delay – eroding the time available to PGRs to complete their PhDs – was having to redesign their research to be ‘Covid-compliant’ or having to devise an entirely new project.

Moving online: Methods

My revised fieldwork took place over one year from May 2021. I spoke with 25 social science PGRs whose research was disrupted in varying degrees due to Covid-19. The research projects of most PGRs I spoke with had to be adapted, moving from face-to-face to online methods. A few PGRs, like me, had to completely abandon our intended research projects and devise new ones. As one of the interviewees, Joan Spencer – a communications student from the UK – recalled, revising her research was a mixed experience emotionally: ‘that is a real point of grief that I had to let it go…. But in a way, I’ve reconciled myself with the grief … and now I’m starting to become very excited about my PhD.’ It was over a year into the pandemic that I began this research, which enabled discussions with students to explore both their past and future pandemic predicaments, and how they adapted, or not, to the entropy of Covid-19. I chose to talk with PGRs on more than one occasion so as to understand their experiences of and adaptations to Covid over time. My research spanned the uncertainties of repeated mobility lockdown restrictions, their relaxation, reintroduction and the slow return to pre-pandemic social movement.

After using a quantitative survey to establish a broad overview of PGRs during the pandemic and to recruit research participants, I began with individual online discussions. To engage more collectively, I followed up with several of the same PGRs in group virtual cafés. I concluded my research with round-up discussions with PGRs I had spoken with throughout my fieldwork.

My research focused solely on social science researchers because they are under-represented in much of the academic literature (see Satinsky et al., 2021) and rarely the sole focus of research, particularly regarding their mental health. While some PhD students’ projects are undertaken as part of a team, the PGRs that I spoke with were sole researchers on their projects. Working alone in this way during the pandemic often exacerbated students’ isolation, particularly in the absence – for the most part – of meaningful academic connections. The ability to move a research project online enabled PGRs to attend to their PhD as a conduit to their hoped-for future. Although, as I explain later, methodological adaptation to Covid-19 involved perceived temporal consequences.

Socio-demographics of interlocutors

The postgraduates who took part in the qualitative part of my research were mostly between the ages of 21 and 40. Several students were aged between 41 and 60; 18 of the 25 PGRs were female and two identified as non-binary. Of the students who took part in my research and stated their ethnic identity in my survey, the majority self-defined as white, with others identified as Bolivian, Lebanese, mixed race or Latino. Seven respondents were international students. Several students lived alone; for two of them this was due to their relationship breaking up during the pandemic. Around half of the students lived with a partner and only one, Jo Wilkinson, had young children. Jo’s husband was furloughed, yet she took on the responsibility for her children’s education – helping with their online classes and other schoolwork from home – which often took her away from her academic commitments (see Pereira, 2020). Another student, Stanley Brown-Thomas cared for a clinically vulnerable housemate. Most PGRs who spoke with me received funding and, if they took time away from their PhD to benefit their health or for other personal circumstances such as increased caring responsibilities, this created a dilemma. Many funding bodies required students to study full-time. If a student temporarily withdrew or registered as part-time, funding could stop. The full-time study requirement of a funding body therefore prevented a PGR from attending to their ill-health or increased responsibilities in other areas, thereby creating conditions which could exacerbate their precariousness. All PGRs were doctoral researchers.

(Relative) control

Despite the disruptions to many PGRs’ carefully planned research projects – temporal anxieties and the delays they faced – the postgraduates that I spoke with maintained their mindset that they would complete their PhD, despite the struggles many experienced. To move forward with their PhD, PGRs sought to mitigate the delays caused by various interruptions to their research through attempts to regain control over it. For several PGRs control had to be actively instigated through various strategies – some were successful while others struggled due to the uncertain duration of the pandemic. The narratives of Victoria Coulter, a sociologist, and Alvaro Fernández, whose field was political studies, reveal some of the varied feelings of (un)control experienced while studying during the pandemic. Victoria told me, ‘it’s gone for me … I’ve lost the love for doing it [my PhD] but hopefully it’ll come back, eventually.’ Alvaro recalled his Covid mindset; ‘I keep going, keep going as much as I can … try to keep my agenda well organized … not losing track, not feel desperate.’ Victoria tried to maintain hopefulness that the emotions she had for her PhD pre-Covid would return. Alvaro adopted a practical, determined mindset, focusing on the present. His narrative hints at potential precariousness if he took his mind off his academic focus. Victoria had a future focus while Alvaro’s strategy was to concentrate on the present, illustrating how temporalities are influenced by changing circumstances.

Working on a PhD involves webs of tensions regarding who and what has control. The dilemma for many PGRs during the pandemic was how disruptions to their PhD could be mitigated and progress maintained. The varied and often unexpected delays to a PGR’s PhD foreground the different dynamics that can influence their project. In looking at how students tried to reduce or manage delays that eroded the time available for their project, we must consider the external and subjective aspects of control to understand how it is relinquished, regained or suspended, and the means by which a student re-establishes it. There is not a binary of control and uncontrol as Adey (2006) argued in relation to absolute immobilities (see above), rather there are degrees of control and influence.

Many social science research projects are dependent on interlocutors and the pandemic affected potential research co-participants too. Interlocutors’ pandemic predicaments could mean that they foregrounded other priorities over a student’s research. I recall asking a community worker during my original PhD project why people were not coming forward to take part in my research. Ana, a community advocate from Romania replied, ‘We’re all Zoomed out … people don’t want to finish work after several Zoom meetings to start another one!’ Farrah Khan, from the UK, who was researching education pedagogy, spoke of her double frustration in recruiting participants, which she related to the control of her research:

that feeling of like it’s no longer in my control any more…. I couldn’t get participants, I couldn’t recruit anybody, no one was getting back to me. Even the people that did get back to me were not available when they said they would be.

Farrah lamented how, if she had been in her field site in-person, her recruitment frustrations might not have been so unmanageable. She experienced the stuckedness of not moving forward with her research, highlighting the disruptions to her PhD which might not have been so frustrating pre-pandemic. Control, therefore, is not always to do with institutional or structural factors. Ultimately, the many barriers plaguing Farrah’s research precipitated a decline in her mental health, highlighting how, as the pandemic brought additional barriers into play, this could have consequences for students’ (ill-)health.

Another aspect that could undermine a student’s agency over their PhD was bureaucracy. A revised PhD topic had to undergo additional scrutiny by supervisors, academic departments and ethics boards – processes that the original project had already been through. Additional bureaucracy often impeded a PhD project because of the increased number of revised research projects requiring approval. One student, Suzie Klein, waited five months for her ethics approval, which, although uncommon, indicates the pressure some universities were under during the pandemic. Bureaucracy introduced additional delays of uncertain duration, making PGRs wait, again. In many instances, control was external to the student, although not exclusively.

Loss of control over a PhD was not always to do with external factors. Arun Kumar, an ethnomusicologist, spoke of how ‘the lingering uncertainty [of lockdowns] was really difficult, you lose motivation’. Conversely, illustrating how particular routines can be motivational, Arun described his return to in-person fieldwork, which ‘provides the structure … you have a strong sense that you can achieve something [and] that was a point of motivation … structure and concentration run in tandem, structure channels your self.’ Arun’s inertia was another cause of staying put, adding delays while he did not have the motivation to work on his PhD. His diminished daily structure and routine were the cause of his inertia and, when regained through the structuring process of engaging with his fieldwork, Arun’s academic impetus was reclaimed. His experience regarding motivation was reflected among other PGRs, revealing how some regained control through purposeful and productive academic structure, sometimes at the expense of self-care. I discuss Arun’s insightful reflection on the role of structure and concentration further below.

PGRs who recognized the role of structure in their disordered lives discovered how reimposing it had academic and personal benefits. Stanley Brown-Thomas’s ³ narrative illustrates how the pandemic caused students to think about their conscious realization and reappraisal of unstructured days:

figuring out … do I need to organize myself in a way that is very structured or less structured, do I need a strict routine or do I need to just kind of see how I feel in the day, and that was quite an interesting moment for me, kind of realizing quite how much structure I needed when the kind of automatic structure of day-to-day life was taken away.

Stanley related their structure to being able to focus on their academic commitments, which would otherwise have suffered. Stanley’s epiphany came about when they understood the role of structure in their life, previously an unconscious habitus. Gustave Belot, a historian from Switzerland, had similar thoughts, and he kept to a daily structure to help his mental health, although it was often a struggle to maintain it: ‘One big problem is that I did not keep myself sane for much of the pandemic…. I think the best thing I did was definitely keep some structure; at some points that wasn’t always easy and it often kind of slipped.’ Gustave illustrates how the pandemic introduced extraordinary existential strains which may not have been experienced pre-pandemic. Structure for Stanley, Gustave and other students was a strategy – an attempt to impose the relative order and control which they had had pre-Covid. Control in their personal life translated into control over their PhD. As Felski (2000) argues, routines are ‘one of the ways we organize the world, make sense of our environment, and stave off the threat of chaos’ (2000: 82). Without the familiar mobilities of pre-Covid times, enforcing structure was both necessary and, for some, a struggle. Yet Stanley and Gustave realized how reimposing structure was academically and psychologically beneficial. These students’ daily structure, including time away from working on a PhD, clearly contributed to helping move their projects forward. Structure imposes demarcations, helping to orientate a student to focus, to concentrate on one task before attending to a different aspect of life. Focus, through structure, enabled more control over their doctoral projects for Gustave, Stanley and a few other students who realized its potential. Conversely, other students spoke of the monotony of their days, ‘just alone again in front of my computer’, as Alvaro recalled. Drawn-out days confounded many students’ ability to focus on their PhD, particularly for PGRs whose structure was indeterminate. Taking some control over a PhD, or other life project, is a practical and existential endeavour, yet can be a struggle to maintain.

Temporospatiality and (un)well-being

While clock-time moved forward uninterrupted, the actual time to completion of a student’s PhD during Covid was reduced because of the unexpected periods of academic immobility and their uncertain duration. Eroded time increased many PGRs’ temporal anxieties about their current and future self. Munn considers how ‘[w]e may think of temporalization as going on in multiple forms “all the time”’ (1992: 104). She also argues that ‘[i]n any given instance, particular temporal dimensions may be foci of attention’ (Munn, 1992: 116). Multiple and competing temporalities do not preclude people from foregrounding one or more of them over others, particularly in times of crisis. As Knight and Stewart argue, ‘[c]rises rip the seams of [temporal] existence apart requiring the extemporaneous re-stitching of time’ (2016: 3). Just as the person mending a torn seam must concentrate on that one task, PGRs in crisis were often focused on their unravelling research projects and the urgency of time. Students’ disrupted projects and their acute awareness of clock-time often brought their hoped-for future into the present as a heightened source of anxiety.

The additional build-up of successive delays that PGRs often experienced weighed heavily on particular PGRs’ minds, often impacting their well-being – a further cause of degrees of stuckedness. Chrysi McDermott told me how even small disruptions can be destabilizing, particularly when they successively build up on top of each other. She told me how:

it’s kind of like an everyday kind of micro build-up of all stressors or just not ideal kind of living arrangements or working arrangements, and then I think that’s probably why it’s kind of quite cumulative.

Chrysi was not alone in how she experienced additional stress during Covid. She, like other PGRs, related the additional stress to her spatial immobility and the impracticality of her home-working set-up. Spatial constraints could aggravate situations which, in non-crisis times, may been adapted to with less psychological tension. With few distractions, as discussed earlier, there was often little to temper anxious ruminations.

Additionally, competing stressors alongside the monotony of emplaced immobility often affected PGRs’ ability to concentrate on their PhD. Reduced concentration resulted in constrained academic mobility and further stuckedness. Students struggled with the myriad disappointments, and the often unnoticed build-up of stressful events sometimes resulted in mental unwell-being. Unwell-being further hampered students’ ability to move forward with their PhD, as they struggled to be academically mobile. A few students spoke of how their over-focus on their PhD and its disruptions caused their unwell-being, forcing them to withdraw from their research to attend to their self-care rather than their PhD. Several PGRs prioritized their PhD over their self-care because there were fewer distractions from the monotony of the days during Covid. Eroding time made it an imperative for several PGRs to overwork on their PhD, to recoup lost time and a sense of purposeful existential mobility.

Several PGRs reported that their universities failed to recognize how academic timelines during Covid-19 did not flow in tandem with stalled PhD projects, and the often negative temporal and psychological impacts this had on them. Often, institutions did not provide additional timeline extensions until several months into the pandemic, meaning many students’ temporal anxieties went unalleviated over long periods. A university’s lack of attention to PGRs’ timeline anxieties sometimes served to reinforce academic and social isolation. Universities decided on what basis a student would be ‘granted’ timeline extensions and for how long, often disempowering them and depriving them of control, exacerbating their temporal anxiety and uncertainty. One student was quite vocal about her lack of institutional support commenting, ‘We’re screaming out to be heard.’ Universities (unwittingly) contributed to many PGRs’ temporal precariousness and unwell-being, thereby adding to concerns around their future-self-making. Conversely, supervisors and the personal and academic support they offered, stood out as indispensable, helping students to realize their hoped-for doctoral self, despite their own Covid disruptions.

Future-self-making

Postgraduates’ future-self-making is a temporal project of existential mobility towards their future self through their PhD. The anxieties about a student’s future, caused by the temporal dimensions of a PhD can impinge on their present situation. Farrah spoke of how her PhD would continue to determine her future, which is why she hoped it would be an optimal piece of work.

This is forever my PhD … this is possibly the most important piece of research I’ll do in my career. It’s my PhD…. I have a certain degree of pride in my work and I want this to be good.

Her use of the word ‘pride’ denotes the intellectual and emotional investment that PGRs put into their PhD and the associated (over)work that it entails. Farrah’s narrative underscores Newman’s (2021) conceptualization of how temporality encompasses control of the future in the present and a PhD perceived as ‘not good enough’ can undermine that. I do not doubt that, in non-crisis situations, PGRs often have doubts about their future self, both personally and from an academic capital perspective. I argue, however, that the Covid crisis made many PGRs’ doubts about their futures more intense due to the disruptions to their PhD.

Several PGRs raised concerns about their future potential, regarding their academic career in particular, as being affected by a research project that was impacted by Covid. Of course, doctoral students live anxious lives for a variety of reasons: for example, the inherent insecurity of early career research (ECR) positions, characteristic of and perpetuated by neoliberal academies. As Farrah highlights below, PGRs often become increasingly aware – as they progress through their doctorate – how precarious ECR can be. And for PGRs whose research was impacted by Covid, their real or perceived academic prospects often caused them to experience heightened anxieties. Furthermore, many students’ temporal anxieties were experienced without the regular support of, and face-to-face interactions with their peers and supervisors. Victoria Coulter explained how the increased isolation during Covid was academically demotivating, which, as with Perry (see earlier), affected her mental health. ‘I’ve lost so much motivation and interest in my work. The disruption has really affected my well-being as I’m always worrying if I’ve done enough or if it’s good enough.’ Victoria’s anxieties were similar to those of several other PGRs, as she foregrounded how working on a PhD in isolation gave rise to more anxiety than in pre-Covid times. She went on to talk about not being able to chat with and ask advice from her peers, or knock on her supervisor’s door for some quick advice, which would have helped to ease her academic concerns. Victoria’s self-questioning as to whether her PhD was good enough was a temporal anxiety as it could, in her view, affect her future job prospects. Future academic anxieties had the potential to manifest as mental ill-health, highlighting how unwell-being has temporal influences. In ‘normal’ times, a completed PhD does not guarantee employment. However, some PGRs questioned their real or perceived employment potential, linking their disrupted research with additional future precariousness due to Covid.

Farrah commented on the internalized pressures of her PhD. She had been working as a charity researcher when she decided on a future in academia; later she questioned whether this was a viable choice. Yet Farrah continued with her PhD, despite her reservations.

You can’t progress too far … without a doctorate and this future, this promised shiny future where you know, once you get that PhD, things are going to look up, things are going to be great, but just for these three years you have to like really suffer through it. It’s difficult to keep that optimism about a wonderful future in academia where you know all this hard work is going to pay off when your university is going through compulsory redundancies and everyone’s on strike.

Farrah’s hoped-for future became overshadowed by realism as a result of her academic interactions: her optimism was a casualty of academic suffering. She also spoke of the inherent suffering of doing a PhD, both in the present and the future. For Farrah, a PhD is an amalgam of contradictions, its potential positive prospects undermined by academic reality. A PhD, by its nature, stretches students’ academic capabilities, yet, as I set out in my conclusions, institutions can help prepare students to manage their ‘suffering’. Farrah’s hope for a potential academic career was undermined by her actual experience of academia as precarious, casting doubts on her future-making. She became alerted to the reality of universities’ neoliberal priorities, which can reflect and create academic precariousness whether there is a global pandemic or not.

Ahmed Aydin, a history student from Lebanon, also spoke of how the pandemic had affected his PhD:

I was, for example, quite confident about my research before the pandemic and I was feeling like I’m doing something really interesting and I … was going to provide a different perspective, but after the pandemic, after all this process, I’m not quite confident enough in my research.

Later in our conversation, Ahmed spoke of how his research was constrained by Covid and how he thought his future teaching opportunities and abilities would be limited as a result. The pandemic introduced additional concerns for several students as they perceived that their revised research could have negative future consequences. Covid could undermine PGRs’ future potential, introducing additional precariousness into their lives.

A person’s hoped-for, imagined futures can be constrained by facts. Our futures are always a balance between aspirations and reality, as the negative and positive aspects of choices are negotiated in relation to each other. Farrah knew that other careers would be available to her when she completed her PhD, seeing alternative future routes. That she was contemplating alternatives to an academic career resonated with Kleist and Jansen, who argue that ‘[t]he future, we are reminded again and again, is not given, it is always in the making’ (2016: 379). The future is based on hopes and aspirations for which uncertainty is a precondition, as Kleist and Jansen argue (2016: 379). The future is an uncertain temporal project and carefully planned strategies to realize it often require conscious reorientation. Covid, however, may have given some students the opportunity to be academically innovative, while for others it reinforced uncertainty and existential inertia. Arun recalled the lingering uncertainty ushered in by the pandemic, seeing it as the cause of his future doubts, inertia and, consequently, his academic immobility:

It was at some point in that period of uncertainty, as it went on from three months to four months, to five months, to a year – it slides into a like, kind of hopelessness because the uncertainty keeps extending … you don’t know what the future will look like. And the lingering uncertainty was really, really difficult … you lose motivation.

The lingering uncertainties that Covid-19 created, not knowing when it would pass and face-to-face research and academic interactions on campus would return, was often demotivating for students. Stuckedness in the present can undermine a student’s hopes for the future. Conversely, when faced with uncertainty, some PGRs’ PhD projects provided the impetus and motivation to seek ways to move forward despite their options being constrained by the pandemic.

Catherine Rundell’s future-focus stood out from those of other students. She spoke positively about her post-doctoral future; ‘I think it gives you an identity as a pandemic postgraduate because there’s been so many experiences we’ve had that other people will never have.’ Only time will tell whether academia will view PGRs’ pandemic experiences as personally beneficial for them, their future students, and their institutions. Not all PGRs shared Catherine’s optimism, fearing that their post-doctoral career could be forever overshadowed by the disruptions to their research caused by Covid-19. From PGRs’ views during Covid, we can recast Newman’s conceptualization of temporality as reflecting how future hopes can be (de)stabilized by present circumstances, rather than controlled by them.

Crises can cause temporal disruption, making PGRs’ future self increasingly uncertain. Due to the uncertainties brought about by the pandemic, a student’s future self was more and more situated in the present in the form of temporal anxieties. A firm sense of agency and control over a PhD helped PGRs to pursue their envisioned future self – often not the case during the pandemic. A significant life goal such as a PhD is not fixed, but a process, a step to other futures that a doctoral identity and its capital may afford. Despite the vicissitudes of the pandemic and their often heightened unwell-being, existential (im)mobilities and temporal dilemmas, the PGRs who spoke with me managed to maintain their future-focus, towards their post-PhD selves – although this was precarious at times.

Conclusions and considerations

This article explored several postgraduate students’ experiences of disruption to their PhD research due to the global Covid-19 pandemic. PGRs’ mobilities were constrained, as they were for most of the public in the UK, the Republic of Ireland and other countries. Constrained mobility, however, had repercussions for PGRs over and above their being limited in where they could move. Students whose research was disrupted by the pandemic were constrained in other unexpected ways for varying periods of uncertain duration. This research shines a light on how emplaced (im)mobilities encompassed and affected PGRs’ current predicaments and their futures as temporal projects of the self. Many PGRs’ temporalities were revealed and experienced as uncertain. We can, therefore, understand how temporalities involve existential mobility. When existential mobility is questioned and made uncertain, it can impact temporal perceptions. PGRs’ temporalities, during Covid or in normal times, are uncertain. The crisis, however, revealed how (im)mobilities and temporalities are bound up with each other and a disruption to one can impact the other. An interruption in mobility and temporality can undermine feelings of control in a situation, whether that is doing a PhD or another significant life project. Diminished control, from many PGRs’ perspectives, challenged their future hopes. Being in control is never certain and the web of connections involved in a PhD can intermingle to influence it in varying degrees. However, PGRs’ temporal anxieties were heightened by their disrupted research and uncertainty in the form of diminished control. Disruptions, by their very nature can be an impetus for a student to make attempts to minimize them, yet during Covid-19 options to do so were often restricted. The temporal nature of control is made more manageable when multiple options, or choices, are available to a student – but those too were constrained by PGRs’ stuckedness. Students’ feelings of stuckedness, and not moving forward with their PhD, amplified the temporal aspects of their doctoral projects and their future selves more and more in the present. Several PGRs experienced their temporal uncertainties as a constraining influence on their present circumstances. In an effort to regain control of their PhD, and its potential for future-self-making, some students reintroduced beneficial structure to their days, though, as they discovered, it could be a struggle to maintain this. The intertwining of PGRs’ temporalities and existential (im)mobilities could affect their mental (ill-)health, which, I argue, warrants more ethnographic attention. Temporal control and more certain existential mobility can help temper and manage mental ill-health. A PhD and the associated commitments attached to it, can therefore precipitate mental ill-health when unmanaged, which in turn can cause more time to be lost, which often impedes purposeful academic mobility. PGRs’ temporal constraints and anxieties were also aggravated by the spatial constraints and constrained mobilities which characterized the pandemic.

The unhealthy consequences of a PhD, exposed in more detail in this article, should encourage PGRs and our discipline to rethink, and to help ensure that students are equipped to embark on and sustain their work towards their PhD. This research reveals some of the causes of the temporal anxieties which can characterize working on a PhD – in ‘normal’ times or during crisis. The pandemic foregrounded some aspects of the PhD process that existed pre-pandemic, and others that were unique to the crisis situation. Covid-19 revealed the strategies that students used, or struggled to use, to help mitigate the disruptions caused by the pandemic, which may serve as a resource for future PGRs.

The experiences of existential (im)mobility and the resources PGRs used to reconfigure their research were varied. Not all students experienced having control of their research taken from them in the same ways, as delays were of differing durations for individual students. Temporal mobilities are, therefore, uncertain, as we often do not know what barriers will arise that will impede them. However, it is the ability to maintain a certain sense of control over temporal uncertainties that helps sustain a student on their intended temporal path, or their ability to take diversions or detours that still lead to the same goals.

The temporal dimension of a PhD puts into perspective how it is a temporal conduit of past dreams, present successes and (anxious) hopeful futures. This article is intended to be more than an analysis of the experiences of PGRs and their existential (im)mobilities as they strived for self-accomplishment. Students’ pandemic experiences may serve as a potential source of support for other PGRs in less extreme situations of emplaced immobility throughout their doctoral programme. For example, the article shows how unexpected and lengthy delays can cause temporal anxieties for a PGR, and that non-academic activities (distractions) can benefit both their PhD work and their mental well-being. Often, PGRs are unprepared for disruptions to their PhD, whether these are due to a crisis or the vicissitudes of life in general. Of course, PGRs cannot be prepared for all unexpected scenarios during their PhD. Students can, however, be provided with strategies to manage peculiar circumstances, and such strategies are currently often picked up piecemeal and commonly not analysed in academic publications or highlighted in introductions to doctoral programmes.

In our academic publications, an ethnographer’s failures and challenges are often not obvious, obscured by academic ‘traditions’ of writing ourselves out of our articles unless they are labelled as autoethnography (see Shreshta, 2010). The influence of a PhD on PGRs’ well-being must be openly discussed as students consider their futures and move forward. PGRs should not have to discover for themselves the potential psychological impact doctoral research can have. When discussing the beneficial or disruptive aspects of the PhD process, solutions must be proposed before a student’s unwell-being becomes an issue. Yet care must be taken to avoid medicalizing normality (Dowrick and Frances, 2013). Covid-19 exposed PGRs to extraordinary situations, which will hopefully be seen as positive contributions to academia as they progress with their future careers, passing on their knowledge to benefit future doctoral researchers.

The pandemic revealed what obstructed many students’ academic mobility, which provides valuable epistemological and ontological learnings for future PGRs. A once-in-a-lifetime global crisis, as it hopefully was, does not rule out future individual or collective crises. No doubt there will be some readers of this work who will argue that the premise of this article – that PGRs’ apprenticeship (see Jenkins, 1994) should encompass institutional and personal self-care – as idealistic and naïve. And therein lies the problem. The discipline of anthropology is expert at, among other things, revealing the sources of and solutions to inequalities. We are social scientists after all, so why do we expose the inequalities experienced by other groups while commonly ignoring our own? Certainly, Covid-19 heightened PGRs’ PhD uncertainties and challenges, many of which were experienced before the pandemic though arguably with lesser intensity. Universities and respective departments must begin by asking PGRs what they need, starting with those who are in the middle, or nearing the end of their doctoral studies, simply because a new PGR might not realize what is required to deal with the challenges of completing a PhD. Universities need to ask what PGRs need to enable them to be existentially mobile, putting strategies in place that help to avoid the circumstances when remedies are needed in the first place.