Harriet Greene - The PhD Comfort Zone

Harriet Greene - The PhD Comfort Zone

August 18, 2026 · 5 min · Episode 728

About this episode

Harriet Greene discusses her experiences and reflections on her PhD journey, including an internship in Spain and the challenges of research collaboration.

Harriet Greene narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher. Eighteen months into a PhD, everything clicks. The experiments run themselves, the walk to work has a coffee stop, and the days start blurring together. Harriet Greene knows exactly why that happens, and it worried her enough to do something about it. In this blog she talks about swapping Oxford for the University of Salamanca for three weeks, working on glioblastoma through a FENS Early-Career Training Programme internship, reading a Spanish dictionary on repeat because nobody in the lab spoke English, and building the first research collaboration that was hers rather than her supervisor's. Recorded from Barcelona, with reflections on why comfort and progress are not the same thing. https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-the-phd-comfort-zone/ Harriet Greene is a PhD student at the University of Oxford researching dementia prevention, with a focus on how vascular risk factors such as hypertension affect the brain. Her project models the neurovascular unit in vitro, allowing her to explore biological mechanisms creatively and collaborate across departments and disease areas. Supported by the British Heart…

People in this episode

Guest: Harriet Greene

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Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Oxford, University of Salamanca, British Heart Foundation

Books & works: The PhD Comfort Zone

Places: Barcelona

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