I feel like I should start this research diary, or "research log" as I have decided to call it, with an explanation on why I have decided to keep one. The truth, though, is that up until Antoine Fauchié brought the idea to me, I hadn't thought of opening a blog specifically dedicated to my phD research.

I am not a stranger to personnal blogging or to blogging in the context of research: I've contributed to the TIME US Hypotheses blog, I made opening and contributing to one for LECTAUREP a set of missions for the interns I mentored over the past couple of years, and at the beginning of the pandemic, I opened one for a side project on my family archives.

In my experience, the hardest is not at all to find what to write about, it is to keep up with the publication rythm: to this date, I haven't published anything on my family research blog in a almost exactly a year. But I guess it doesn't have to be a big deal. When it comes to the research or projects I work on daily, I'm more used to micro-blogging on Twitter. When I have something to say and share about what I think are new interesting developments, you can be sure you'll see me tweet about it.

And yet, I figured that Twitter might not be the best solution to keep track of the progress of my phD. First of all, not everybody is on Twitter, and even though a great part of the DH community can be found there, it's probably best to remain accessible to as many people as possible. I guess that's also why this blog will be written in English. Secondly, I can't imagine putting a "#phd", or something like that, every time I make tweets that could've been added to a research diary. Thus, this blog is a dedicated space where a year or two from now, I hope it will be possible to follow the development of my reflexion.

I have to say that for a project as personal as a phD research, which comes with loads of potential stumbling blocks, the prospect of opening up and sharing my doubts, questions and ideas is a real challenge. A good one though. And it presents interesting opportunities: make me write about my research and test my arguments, give me the possibility to pay hommage to the people surrounding me and to their contributions to my progress, and hopefully share the fun stuff coming up from this project!