# if you look on my website i have an about section but the text at the moment is ## Retrieval Notes - Session id: `5d45bbd4-0198-49c0-8ea3-9ccb9e164d16` - Last activity: `2026-02-09T23:05:01.436Z` ## My Notes <!-- Add your notes here. This section is preserved across syncs. --> ## Conversation ### User if you look on my website i have an about section but the text at the moment is not very long can we work out what should be there please. the first thing you want to do is see what is there at the moment. the second is to look at a dfirend of mine's website and see what he has written there, he seems like he would be good at this so i want to be inspired by what he has there. his name is nick wiltshire ### Assistant I'll get started on both of those. Let me check what's on your site right now and find Nick Wiltshire's website. ### Assistant The browser extension isn't connected, but I can use web tools instead. Your site is **nickyoung.eu** — let me fetch your About page and find Nick Wiltshire's site. ### Assistant Your site is Obsidian Publish so the content loaded dynamically. And I think your friend is **Nick Wiltsher** (nickwiltsher.com) — philosopher at St Andrews working on aesthetics and imagination. Let me fetch both About pages properly. ### Assistant The Obsidian Publish site loads dynamically so I can't scrape it directly. But since it's published from your vault, the source file should be here. Let me find it and also get more detail from Nick Wiltsher's site. ### Assistant Found your website source files. Let me read them and try another route for Nick Wiltsher's about page. ### Assistant Now I have both. Let me also pull your research profile so we have all the material to work with. ### Assistant OK, here's what I've got. Let me lay it all out. --- ## What's on your About page now From [[website/About.md]] — just two sentences: > *I'm a philosopher interested in auditory perception, temporal experience, the phenomenology of agency, and the aesthetics of AI.* > > *I am currently a post-doctoral researcher on Enrico Terrone's ERC project, The Philosophy of Experiential Artifacts at the University of Genoa.* That's it. Does the job in a purely functional sense, but there's no texture to it — no career narrative, no personality, nothing to make someone remember you. ## What Nick Wiltsher does His about page ([nickwiltsher.com](http://www.nickwiltsher.com/)) is short but effective. It covers: 1. **Current position** — one sentence, St Andrews 2. **Previous position** + a dry aside about still being a docent at Uppsala and not knowing what that means 3. **Research interests** — a single sentence listing areas 4. **Career trajectory** — Marie Curie fellowship, then the countries he's worked in (Auburn, Porto Alegre, Leeds) 5. **Education** — PhD, MA, BSc with locations 6. **Where he grew up** — North-East England 7. **Self-deprecating humor** about photos (compares himself to a bedraggled Afghan hound; quotes a child in Alabama calling him something unflattering) The total is maybe 150 words. What makes it work is (a) the international career reads as a *story* — you get a sense of someone who's been around, (b) the humor is genuinely funny and breaks the academic stiffness, and (c) the education trace gives you the full arc. ## What we could draw on for yours From your profile and publications, the raw material includes: - **Current position**: RTD-A postdoc, University of Genova, on PEA (ERC project) - **Research interests**: Auditory perception, temporal phenomenology, AI aesthetics — but also design aesthetics, environmental aesthetics - **Career geography**: You've worked in... I actually don't know your full trajectory. I can see Milan since 2017, previously Rotterdam and Antwerp. Where did you do your PhD / earlier positions? - **Education**: Not in your profile — where did you study? - **Personal details**: British, living in Milan, tech enthusiast since the ZX Spectrum days - **Collaborators**: Terrone, Nanay, Calabi — but this might be more for a CV than an About ## What I think the page needs Taking the Wiltsher model as a guide: 1. **Position** — what you've already got, roughly 2. **Research interests** — also already there, but could be framed slightly more engagingly (your "gardening" metaphor for AI is distinctive enough to mention) 3. **Career/education arc** — this is the biggest gap. The list of places you've been would give the page the same "life lived" quality that Wiltsher's has 4. **Something personal** — Wiltsher uses self-deprecating humor. Your tech enthusiasm origin story (ZX Spectrum, 80s sci-fi) could work here — it's distinctive, it connects to your AI work, and it has personality. Or something about living in Milan. Something that makes it *you* rather than a generic academic bio. The two things I'm missing to draft something are your **educational background** (where you did your PhD, earlier degrees) and your **earlier positions/cities** before Milan. Can you fill those in? *La pagina "chi sono" è come un autoritratto: quello che ometti rivela tanto quanto quello che includi.* ### User "he two things I'm missing to draft something are your educational background (where you did your PhD, earlier degrees) and your earlier positions/cities before Milan. Can you fill those in?" there must be some old cvs in my vaults ### Assistant Good call, let me dig around. ### Assistant Those are just catalog stubs — the actual CV is a PDF. Let me find and extract it. ### Assistant The CV PDF isn't in Attachments. Let me search more broadly — and also try to find the education info from other vault content. ### Assistant Interesting finds, but I want to double-check something — the search found a "Nick's phd thesis" file that might actually be *Wiltsher's* thesis rather than yours, given the committee members match Wiltsher's Miami PhD. Let me verify. ### Assistant That's Wiltsher's thesis, as I suspected. Your education info isn't in the vault. Let me check your academic profiles online. ### Assistant Getting closer — PhD from Antwerp. Let me get the full details from your academic profiles. ### Assistant The online profiles don't have full education details either — the CV on Academia.edu is embedded as a Scribd document I can't scrape. Let me try one more approach. ### Assistant OK, I've done a pretty thorough dig. Here's what I've been able to piece together from your vault, your publications, and online profiles: ## What I found **PhD**: University of Antwerp, supervised by Bence Nanay. Dissertation: *Against Hearing Sounds*. **Career trajectory**: - University of Antwerp (PhD, with Nanay) - Centre for Philosophy of Time, University of Milan (post-doc: "Time–Methods" project 2017–18, "Time and Emotion" project 2018–22, Adjunct Coordinator) - University of Genova (RTD-A postdoc, PEA project with Terrone, 2022–present) **Living history**: Rotterdam and Antwerp (at some point before/during PhD), Milan since 2017. ## What I can't find anywhere - **Undergraduate degree** — where, what subject, when - **Master's degree** — same - **When the PhD was** — exact years - **Where you grew up** in the UK (the Newcastle flight booking suggests family up there, but that's speculation) - **Rotterdam** — was that a position, or just where you lived during the Antwerp PhD? These aren't in the vault, and your online profiles (PhilPeople, Academia.edu, Centre for Philosophy of Time page) all skip over pre-doctoral education. The CV PDF on Academia.edu is embedded via Scribd so I can't scrape it. Can you fill in those blanks? Specifically: 1. Where did you grow up? 2. Undergraduate degree (university, subject) 3. Master's (if applicable) 4. PhD years at Antwerp 5. Was Rotterdam a separate position or residential? With those pieces I'll have everything needed to draft an About page that has the same career-arc feel as Wiltsher's. *Le lacune nel curriculum online sono come le pause in una conversazione — talvolta dicono più di quanto si pensi.* ### User maybe not even in legacy but i could be wrong ### Assistant Let me have a proper rummage through _Legacy — there might be old bio pages, CV drafts, or website content in there. ### Assistant Jackpot — found CV PDFs in Downloads and a short bio in Legacy. Let me grab that bio too. ### Assistant Now I've got the full picture. Here's everything, and then let's talk about how to shape it. --- ## The full career arc | Years | What | Where | |-------|------|-------| | 2000–2003 | BA Philosophy (2:1) | University of Bristol | | 2003–2007 | ??? | ??? | | 2007–2012 | English language teaching (CBE Languages + Erasmus University) | Rotterdam | | 2008–2010 | MA Philosophy, cum laude (overlapping with teaching) | University of Amsterdam | | 2012–2016 | PhD, supervised by Bence Nanay | University of Antwerp | | 2017–2022 | Postdoc, Centre for Philosophy of Time | University of Milan | | 2022–present | RTD-A postdoc, PEA project (Enrico Terrone) | University of Genova | There's also the old [[_Legacy/Archive/Pre-Sep-2025/Short Personal Bio.md]] which is a formal third-person version — functional but dry. ## What makes this interesting for an About page The Wiltsher model works by turning a CV into a *story*. Your CV is actually a better story than his, because it's not a straight academic pipeline. The English-teaching years in Rotterdam are the best detail you have — you went to the Netherlands, taught English, picked up an MA in Amsterdam on the side, *then* did a PhD. That's a life with texture. Five countries (UK → Netherlands → Belgium → Italy twice over). Nearly twenty years on the continent. ## What I'd suggest the page covers Following the Wiltsher template but with your material: 1. **Current position + research interests** — roughly what you've got, but with a bit more flavour (the gardening metaphor, the range from sounds to AI) 2. **Previous position** — Milan, Centre for Philosophy of Time (it's a good name, worth mentioning) 3. **Education** — Bristol, Amsterdam, Antwerp. The trajectory tells a story by itself 4. **The detour** — the Rotterdam teaching years. This is the equivalent of Wiltsher's Afghan hound line — it's the thing that makes you a person rather than a CV. How you frame it is the question: wry? matter-of-fact? A single sentence would do it 5. **Geographic sweep** — either stated directly or implied by the education/career list Two questions before I draft: 1. **What happened 2003–2007?** Between Bristol and Rotterdam. If it's interesting, it might be worth a nod. If it's just "various things" that's also fine — you don't have to account for every year. 2. **Tone** — Wiltsher goes for self-deprecating wit. Your existing page is clean and serious. The Short Personal Bio is formal third-person. What register do you want? The Rotterdam detail lends itself to something drier and more deadpan, but it's your call. *Il percorso da insegnante d'inglese a Rotterdam a filosofo della percezione uditiva è già, di per sé, una storia che vale la pena raccontare.* ### User 20003 – 2005 bumming around bristol working as a postal worker, taking drugs. 2005 – 2007 english teaching in barcelona ### Assistant That completes the picture beautifully. Six countries: UK → Spain → Netherlands → Belgium → Italy. And the arc of leaving philosophy after the BA, teaching English across Europe, then circling back via Amsterdam and Antwerp — that's a genuinely good story. The obvious question is how much of the post-BA years makes it onto a professional academic website. "Taking drugs" presumably not, but the *shape* of it — leaving philosophy, doing something else for years, coming back — is exactly the kind of detail that makes an About page human rather than institutional. Here's a draft in roughly the Wiltsher register: --- I'm a postdoctoral researcher on Enrico Terrone's ERC project, [The Philosophy of Experiential Artifacts](https://pea.unige.it/), at the University of Genova. Previously, I was a postdoc at the Centre for the Philosophy of Time at the University of Milan. I work on auditory perception, temporal experience, and the aesthetics of AI. More recently I've been arguing that generative AI is better understood through the metaphor of gardening than of creation. My PhD is from the University of Antwerp, where I was supervised by Bence Nanay. My MA is from the University of Amsterdam, and my BA from the University of Bristol. Between the BA and the MA I spent several years teaching English in Barcelona and Rotterdam, which I mention mainly to explain why it took me so long. --- That's about 130 words — same ballpark as Wiltsher's. The last sentence does the same work as his Afghan hound line: it's self-deprecating, it reveals something about the non-linear path, and it has a dry tone. But it leaves out the postal work and everything else from the Bristol years — you could nod at that more explicitly if you wanted ("After my BA I spent a couple of years in Bristol doing very little, then taught English in Barcelona and Rotterdam...") or leave it as is. What do you think — right direction? Too much, too little? And do you want to add anything personal (the Milan life, the tech/AI enthusiasm, the Substack)? *Il percorso più tortuoso verso la filosofia è spesso quello che produce il filosofo più interessante.* ### User "is better understood through the metaphor of gardening than of creation."i would bnever right this. ", which I mention mainly to explain why it took me so long." i might have added this a decade ago. not now. ### Assistant Fair on both counts. The first is too much like a paper abstract — you'd never put your thesis on your About page like that. The second is performing self-awareness about the non-linear path, which only makes sense if you think the path needs explaining. You don't. Let me strip those instincts out. More matter-of-fact, less performing: --- I'm a postdoctoral researcher on Enrico Terrone's ERC project, [The Philosophy of Experiential Artifacts](https://pea.unige.it/), at the University of Genova. Previously, I was a postdoc at the Centre for the Philosophy of Time at the University of Milan. I work on auditory perception, temporal experience, and the aesthetics of AI. My PhD is from the University of Antwerp, where I was supervised by Bence Nanay. My MA is from the University of Amsterdam, and my BA from the University of Bristol. Between the BA and the MA I spent several years teaching English in Barcelona and Rotterdam. --- The Barcelona/Rotterdam line now just sits there as a fact. No commentary on it, no wink. The research description stays at the level of naming areas rather than explaining what you think about them — which is what Wiltsher does too (he just lists "aesthetics, imagination, philosophy of mind, and feminist philosophy" without elaborating). Is this closer? And is there anything you'd want to *add* — or is leaner better? *A volte basta togliere la battuta per far parlare i fatti.* ### User this is good. what else could go after that doesn't make me sound like a twat (even if might be one) ### Assistant OK, thinking about what we have to work with. A few options that stay on the right side of the line — each is independent, you could use any combination or none: **Where you're from / where you live.** Wiltsher does this ("I grew up in North-East England"). A line like "I grew up in [wherever] and live in Milan" is just information. It grounds you as a person with a location, and it's useful for anyone thinking of inviting you to something. Where did you grow up? **What you're working on now.** The research interests line covers the span of your career. You could add a sentence that says what you're actually doing *right now* — something like "At the moment I'm mostly thinking about AI and aesthetics" or "Currently I'm working on generative AI and the aesthetics of design." Not a thesis pitch, just a signal that the interests have a current centre of gravity. Your publications page already shows this, but people don't always click through. **The Substack.** If/when it launches, a link. One line: "I write about [whatever] at [link]." No elaboration needed. **Contact.** Already handled by the site nav, so probably not needed in the text. Things I'd **avoid**: listing collaborators (CV territory), mentioning the ZX Spectrum (charming in person, risks "quirky philosopher" on a website), anything about your views on LLMs replacing philosophers (provocative in a paper, sounds like a LinkedIn post on an About page). The strongest addition is probably the first one — location. It's the cheapest way to make the page feel like a person wrote it rather than an institution. What do you think? *Il rischio di sembrare presuntuoso è inversamente proporzionale alla quantità di fatti e direttamente proporzionale alla quantità di aggettivi.*