 My name is Paul Naylor, I'm doing a collaborative doctoral project between the University of Birmingham and the British Library entitled Arabic Sources for African History. I'm personally specialising in the Sokoto Caliphate, which was a 19th century Theocratic Muslim state in present-day northern Nigeria. For this program I have two supervisors. One is working at the Department of African Studies Anthropology here in Birmingham and the second is a curator of Africa collections at the British Library. Increasingly PhD students have to show that they are able to engage with a wider public from the academic community and the program is perfect for that because I have to do that at the British Library. So it really feels like I'm kind of plugged into something bigger than my research topic. Working on the West Africa World Symbol Song exhibition was a fantastic experience. I was cataloguing these manuscripts I came across something interesting, told my supervisor and the next week I find that it's on the exhibition list of items that will be shown to the public. It was very exciting to see items in the collection that I was working on, on display. Many people that came to the exhibition had a connection to West Africa and it's great to show people that their history is relevant to the Greater Pitch Show. It was really nice to see that. Every month they do this later at the library. During the exhibition these were West African themed. So it was great to see a workplace turned into this party. This collaboration has taught me how good it is to collaborate. I hope that I can use the contacts I've made, the experience I've had at these two institutions and continue that after I've finished the program.