Maybe you have gathered already, or maybe not, but I am quite a mature PhD student. I am a lecturer, I write and publish regularly and of course I know everything best and am already the expert in my topic! Sort of. I really felt for my wonderful (as I hope he will turn out to be) supervisor, who I think must have felt terrified to encounter a colleague in such a new relationship. He gave me lots and lots of good ideas of things to get stuck into and what to read.
Most important was a discussion of the notion of contemporaneity. Thinking about how to avoid getting stuck in tracing the origins of art fairs and the early history of the fair versus my interest in what fairs tell us about the art world today. Good tactics. Doesn’t stop me digging back when trying to define first what a contemporary art fair is not. Exclusion is always a good start … Maybe even doing a bit of mapping?
So I am actually off to the library gathering some books. Oh, and I still haven’t decided if to stick with Zotero or move to RefWorks?? Maybe this might help: Decision time. The review actually didn’t help – they are all goo (incl. Endnote and Mendeley) and in the end it is personal choice.
And still finding nice phd blogs:
Art Market PhD Blog 