WPeople: Alex Lee

Alex Lee is a postgraduate teaching assistant. Since finishing her PhD at UCL, she has worked as a tutor in the History department and with the university’s Writing Lab. She also spends time working as a Taster Presenter with the Access and Widening Participation team. 

What are you doing at UCL?

I finished my PhD in March 2017, and I am now a Postgraduate Teaching Assistant in the School of European Languages and Culture and Society (SELCS) and in History. I’m also a Taster Presenter.

What does your day to day look like?

No two days are the same for me at the minute. Sometimes I’m teaching small seminar groups as part of the work I do for the History department. My work with SELCS involves working in the Writing Lab leading workshops or doing one-to-one sessions. As a Taster Presenter, I spend time going into schools or working with pupils who are visiting UCL.

Can you tell me a little bit about your PhD?

I studied Medieval Italian History. I was supervised partly by the Italian Department and also partly by Science and Technology studies. It sounds like a really strange combination, but I’m interested in the intersection between popular religion and epidemic disease in late Medieval Europe.

For my PhD, I focussed on a group called the Bianchi of 1399 which spread throughout Northern and Central Italy in the summer and autumn of that year. In the midst of a plague epidemic and shortly before the Jubilee celebrations of 1400, men, women and children felt drawn to don white robes and participate in nine day long processions, shouting for “pace e misericordia” (peace and mercy). They were trying to stop the plague from spreading. My thesis argues that you can’t consider religious revivals such as this as a whole. Instead you have to consider the individual places that they pass through along the way.

Are you still getting to do a little bit of a research now that you have finished your PhD?

I have a little bit of time to do research. I’m applying to do a new research project about plague and pilgrimage. I’m also still writing about my doctoral project. I’ve written a few essays and now I’m working on my book.

Tell me about your work with the Writing Lab

The Writing Lab is open to all students in the School of Laws, Arts and Humanities, and Social and Historical Sciences. We also work with students from the Bartlett and Psychology. The idea of the Writing Lab is to help students write essays. One of the ways we do that is through one-to-one tutorials. Students bring us ideas, plans or even essays that they have started to write and we work with them to help them progress. We also run workshops, for example we do workshops on how to work with citations, and how to write introductions and conclusions.

What made you want to be a Taster Presenter?

I came from a state school background. When I was in Year 10 or 11, I went on a trip to Oxford University to participate in a Widening Participation activity. It was that trip that inspired me to apply to Cambridge and it was the first time I’d really considered higher education.

Now that I have been through university and I am working here, I wanted to give something back and inspire the next generation of state school students who are considering university to give it a chance.

What is the best thing about being a Taster Presenter?

Getting people excited about Medieval Palaeography!

Palaeography is learning how to read manuscripts. The students I work with are usually really interesting because it’s a bit like codebreaking. In a lot of my sessions I used an excerpt from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales so it is in English but it really doesn’t look like it. That causes confusion and makes them want to interact with it. By the end of the session, the students can read a little bit of the text and they really enjoy that.

What projects have you been involved in?

Over the summer I worked on the Realising Opportunities project and mentored three students. I’ve also given lectures on academic skills such as writing essays and referencing. Sometimes I run taster sessions, which are about my area of research.  The session that I normally run focuses on understanding plagues using medieval sources. The students look at medieval texts, images and manuscripts. That’s where the paleography exercise comes in.

What would be your advice for someone who is thinking about being a Taster Presenter?

For me it’s important to integrate skills into your sessions. Doing so means that instead of just lecturing the students on a topic that you’re interested in, you’re teaching them something that they can go away and use. Another thing that I think is important is flexibility. For example, I have three activities ready for if I’m doing an hour long session and only two if I’m doing a 45 minute session. Sometimes the students have more questions than you could have ever imagined and that can affect your timings. It’s important to be ready for that and be able to change your plan if needed.

If you would like to know more about Alex, you can attend the Year 12 Masterclass she will be running in April. More information about what is involved and how to apply is available on our website.