I have started this blog in with the purpose of making it easier for me to follow my own thought patters as I am writing my Doctoral thesis. My major problem being the long breaks between writing periods due to work.
Firstly, to give someone who might drop into this page a basic idea of who I am and what I’m doing. My name is Julia, and I have finished my Master’s in Political History in 2008 at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Since then, I have applied and started to study Economics at the Helsinki School of Economics, which is now known as the Aalto University. I finished my Master’s in the schedule that our political decision-makers wish us to do, in 4,5 years, but since then I have been drifting a little bit.
After starting my studies in Economics, I realised that getting a degree in the field would require studying full-time. Also, after talking with the people in charge of helping the students out, I also realised that none of my previous studies would count in any way or help me. In practice, this means that I would need to start completely over again. They would not accept my previous language studies, or even computer courses as part of my second degree. In addition, the courses at the school most need attendance, I would be tied to a very school like environment, starting my Swedish studies again. The more I thought about it, the less it made sense. I decided to keep on doing some of the courses, but not aiming at getting a degree, at least not any time soon. I just have a very strong opposition against ridiculous waste of time. I am already qualified to work in a government position having done my compulsory Swedish test for my previous degree, why would I need to start all over again. It’s a qualification! The most ridiculous thing is, that someone coming from the School of Economics and starting a new degree at my home university, can get many courses accepted as part of their second degree.
After doing one autumn’s worth of studies in Economics, I decided that I needed change. I applied to do my Doctoral studies at my home university, and luckily got in. After this, I wanted to gain more work experience in my own field, and ended up moving to Australia to do a second internship at the Australian Institute of International Affairs. I had the time of my life in Aus, and decided to go back as soon as possible. Having worked in Finland over the summer of 2009, I went back to live on Kangaroo Island in September. There I started to work on my PhD research, and went through a lot of material on Europol, as well as read literature. At this stage, my idea was to do research on Europol and terrorism and compare it to Interpol.
After returning to Finland in late 2009, I gained work at a company that organises preparing courses for the universities’ entrance exams. In addition, I was teaching yoga several hours a week. I tried to continue with my research, but teaching the course was really hectic and took a lot of time with 20 students writing two essays a week.
Having finished the course, I gained work as an office assistant for the summer. In autumn 2010, I returned to Australia to continue to concentrate on my research. I was still planning to write on Europol, and continued to study that subject further. I found myself an internship that I would commence once arriving back to Finland in January 2011.
I worked at the Finnish Business and Policy Forum for three months, and as the internship was ending, I gained a real job at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. My work there finished at the end of June, as the person I was replacing returned from their maternity leave.
I welcomed the break, as I had not been working on my research in a long time. Once the job finished, I left for Switzerland to do a course in International Humanitarian Law organised by the International Committee of the Red Cross. I enjoyed the course and the following holiday period thoroughly, and once I returned to work with the thesis, I felt revived and highly motivated. The course in IHL had given me a lot of new ideas and encouraged me to go through with my plan: I wanted to do my PhD in Law instead of Political History.
I decided to apply to study Legal History, and I spent a couple of months writing research plans and proposals for the Faculty of Law as well as different private funds, searching for a grant to finally give me the chance to work on my research full time. I had also applied to a couple of different research organisations around the world, with the idea on my mind that I would like to do research and also live abroad again. I did get some replies, and one invitation letter from Brisbane, Australia. It offered me a position as a visiting fellow in an institute called Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security. This place is perfect when looking at their interests. The only problem is that the position is unpaid, so I’d really need to get the grant that I applied for.
Having finished the grant applications, and the application for the Faculty of Law, I got an interesting job offer, and took it. Now I am once again working full time, and waiting to hear back from the grants. I did manage to get myself a travel grant for the tickets to Aus, and I did get accepted to the Faculty of Law, so I am looking forward to a third good sign, so I can really start working on the research.
My current idea is to write on the research question “Is there a need for an international definition of terrorism?” The answer to this question will use my findings from my Master’s thesis (on the history of international police cooperation), look at current international law, and try to address this question from many different points of view.
I have decided what articles the research is going to consist of, and one of the articles is nearly ready. I have been mostly working on article 3 which will concentrate on International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law. There is so much material on this topic! This has been the part worrying me (and interesting me) the most. I have planned to do it based on legal scholar’s points of view, and look into their discussion. There are scholars who claim that a definition of terrorism is not needed and there are scholars who have the exact opposite view on this. I start with the idea that actually coming up with a definition might freeze international cooperation against terrorism, because it would need to include the idea that terrorist acts have a political, religious or other ideological motivation. And this was the problematic element for Interpol before: anything that was declared political (etc) was out of the organisation’s scope of action. Then again, I understand the point as well that terrorism is a term that can be used against basically anything if it is not defined, but still used in legal texts. At least to me, this controversy is one of the reasons I am super stoked on my topic. The main problem for me is though that is it ok for a Doctoral thesis to have a part in it, which is almost solely based on secondary sources? I would use the research in a way as a primary source, backing my argument, but still I am a little bit confused and need to find out more about this when I get the actual writing process going.
I have been writing this article already, and feel that it is going quite well. The legal studies that were made a condition for me to get a Doctoral degree from the Faculty of Law should assist in seeing how to analyse the texts and maybe also “what kind of glasses to put on” when reading the documents.
The other articles are more straightforward. Article number 1 will serve as an introduction to the thesis and will give an overview of the background of the study, and I will write it last. I already have about ten pages of material, as my research plan contains most of the points that the introduction needs. Article 2 will continue the theme of my Master's thesis by describing the history of anti-terrorist police co-operation. This one I can finish in a very short time, so I will only worry about it later. Article 3, as described above, will discuss the relationship between terrorism, International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law. Article 4 will look at the United Nations' conventions on terrorism, including the drafting of the definition of terrorism which has not yet been completed. The final article number 5 will bring the previous articles together and answer the research question: “Is there a need for a common definition of terrorism?” Articles 1 & 5 together should form about 70-100 pages and the rest about 150-200 pages. This way I can aim at writing 50 pages for each article, and the whole should be a balanced 250 pages of text. My problem normally is restricting the length of the text, not producing it, so I am quite sure that the 50 page limit will easily be exceeded.
My next steps in the process are reading more background material (I will try to write down here what I have read so I can find the same articles later) and to continue working on Article 3. The articles are going to be intertwined, so the other parts are also going to grow at the same pace.
At this stage though, it looks like I’ll be back to work in January. Hopefully in Brisbane!
