Behind the books and research papers, the world of academia
An interview
with
Flora Derounian
Time check. 9am. Here at the Terrace Bar in The Hawthorns, it’s still early morning and the coffee rush hasn’t yet hit. But for those bustling professors and students who have made it up the hill, the café presents un ricettacolo from the blustering November winds outside. Flora Derounian, French and Italian graduate of Exeter, with an MA in Translation and Interpreting from Bath, and now PhD student at Bristol, sits typing away on her computer.
Buon giorno! Thank you for agreeing to meet. So, you are doing a Doctorate (in Philosophy)? How is it going?
Yes. [Doing a PhD], it’s an interesting process. The title of my PhD is ‘Memory and Representations: Working Women in Post War Italy’. I am comparing oral testimony with cinematic sources; I identified five different industries and then I interviewed women about their experience within those industries.]
What was it like talking to these women, and how did you contact them? Did you use social media?
I went to Italy where I interviewed rice workers, and seamstresses, and nuns… you must think I’m weird. They were about 75-102 [years old]. They aren’t great at social media. Although one, a great woman, slightly fascist, I contacted via Facebook; she sends me stickers.
What other work have you done for the project?
I had to work through contracts, I traced wage patterns, also looking into worker’s rights and maternity leave - how they [all] evolve and comparing that with the economy at the time. I wanted to include a quantitative element, because most sociological work is qualitative.
Flora Derounian is a PhD student at the University of Bristol in the Italian department. Felicity wants to know what the world of acedemia really invOlves...