Denise Venturi is Ph.D. Candidate in International Law at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.  Her research focuses on the concept of vulnerability with reference to LGBTIQ+ asylum-seekers and refugees. At present, she is a Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle-Saale, Germany). She has worked for UNHCR in various protection roles, with a focus on refugee status determination, capacity building, and law and policy analysis. She has been Asylum Liaison Officer with the UNHCR Liaison Office to the EU Asylum Agency and focal point on claims based on sexual orientation and gender identity with UNHCR Italy. With UNHCR, she has also worked on protection monitoring and reporting, as well as on advocacy and strategic litigation.    In this episode we discuss the challenges that Denise has faced in engaging with her PhD while working full-time.   She shares how her professional work led her into her PhD study and how the process of the PhD has served to develop her career.   Denise outlines the difficulty of juggling full-time work with the UN and her PhD studies, leading to challenges in productivity.  She talks about her experience of overwhelm and her decision to take some time out of the PhD in order to focus on her job and then taking a sabbatical from work to focus on her PhD!   Denise’s top tip for others is around finding both practical and emotional support. For a transcript of this episode go to www.thephdliferaft.com If you would like to receive a useful weekly email from the PhD Life Raft you can sign up here for ‘Notes from the Life Raft’: https://mailchi.mp/f2dce91955c6/notes-from-the-life-raft