A few random thoughts: is the project you're working on actually 'useless' i.e. there's no way you'll get a PhD out of it, or is uselessness something you're projecting onto it because you want to be doing something else? I wondered whether it's something your supervisor actually thinks is important, and so doesn't really get your attitude towards it?
You're the person who is going to have to write up the thesis convincingly, get some publications out of it and sell it in job applications - do you think you can change your own feelings towards the project enough to do that? If you stepped back from your frustration, and saw the project with an outsider's vision, are there proactive things you could suggest doing to make it more interesting for you or more likely to succeed? I think if the answer to the last two questions is no, you might be best served to walk away for your own mental health if nothing else. But if you think you can break through your negativity about the project and the supervisor and make the best of the situation as it is, rather than how you would like it to be, then sticking it out and trying to change direction afterwards as pjlu suggests would seem the best option.

OP - the journal name would help!

Have you thought about Stata? I think it's better than SPSS for most statistical analysis but not as tough to get to grips with than R (and handles large datasets better than R if that's an issue). That said Hazyjane's right - if you only want to do basic regressions then SPSS is probably fine and possibly the easiest, although I loathe it personally. It's just that if you want to do anything more interesting that SPSS becomes cumbersome and limiting.

Was the conference paper published formally in proceedings, or did you just present it? If it's the former, then you can't reuse the introduction, but if it's the latter it's OK to reuse the text, providing the original isn't currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. What you need to avoid is duplicate published text - I've seen journals retract articles for duplication, and that is really not something you'd want on your c.v.

I'd agree with smoobles - fine if you don't want an academic job, but for all the reasons smoobles gives, it's a bit risky if you do. PhD students who are no longer seen in the department are often victims of the 'out of sight, out of mind' phenomena, when it comes to professional opportunities. Not having recent conference / teaching experience will be a red flag to appointments committees as will lukewarm references - given the state of the academic job market, this is risky. And although your boyfriend understandably wants to go home, is he aware that academic careers seem increasingly to require a lot of relocations in the early stages? If you have a good chance of a non-academic job in your home town then great - but if not, you might need to explain to him what your career might mean.
Just a thought too - while it's always tempting to return to the parental eaves and relinquish adult responsibilities, are either set of parents actually on board with the idea that you won't be paying rent, bills, doing housework etc? I can't imagine my own parents having taken too kindly to that idea.

I can only say I met more truly unpleasant and arrogant people among the PhD student community, than I have met before in any other job or after actually working in academia, so my sympathies! If this person is excluding you, then it's probable that others are also being shut out - perhaps you could find out who else is on the outside and invite them for coffee. The other thing I would say is that while it's not nice to feel excluded from coffee breaks, in the larger scheme of things they aren't that important, don't let her attitude let you exclude yourself from other more important lab / departmental things. Where I work at the moment, the 'in' crowd of PhD students think they are far too important to attend the departmental research seminars, and it's the 'outsiders' who come along. Who is it who gets invited to drinks / meals with the academic staff and the visiting speakers, thus getting chances to network professionally? The ones who attend the seminars and to be honest, they are the ones making the connections that will help them get jobs. Keep your eye on what really matters.

If you are getting interviews then you are getting further than most, and it suggests that your cv is strong and that your institution isn't a barrier, but perhaps that you are not performing well at interview. Anecdotally, what I've heard quite a lot is that new PhDs sem to have completely missed the fact that the academic environment in the UK has changed quite a bit in the last few years, and have not realised that teaching matters a lot more than it did, and also that research plans need to take into account the impact agenda and the fact that funding is limited. Maybe you are coming across as too much of a one-sided person (a strategy that would have worked a few years ago but not now). Just a thought and I might be miles off, but it's something i've heard a lot about.

The Russell Group are the group of the most research intensive universities so a bit different to the Ivy League. Your advisor is correct to say that they are unlikely to employ anyone as a law lecturer without either (and as I understand it preferably both) a PhD and substantial professional legal experience. I would also doubt that you'd have much luck getting a lecturing position at a lower-ranked university without the ability to teach English or Scottish (depending on where you are) law, which you presumably don't have, as the majority of an LLB is the compulsory qualifying law modules and only EU law (if you have studied that) would really cross over to a civil law training. I suppose you could do the 1 year graduate diploma in law to convert to English / Scottish law, but I suspect those with the qualifying degree plus either PhD or legal experience would still be preferred for any lectureships.
As to doing a PhD, you might be able to get some hourly paid teaching for seminars - certainly I knew people who did a little of this during their law PhDs at the Russell Group university where I studied. But a PhD is a research degree and it is a lot of lonely research, and if that does not appeal, don't do one. Not least because even if you were one of the minority of people, who get a lectureship afterwards (most do not - and those who do rarely get them at the university they qualified at), then more lonely research is a large part of the job.

Yes in your post you don't actually say what the current bullying is. Are you being accused of scientific misconduct because your results are not replicable and if so, where is the accusation coming from? If they have been published and another scientist has challenged them, or the supervisor is trying to publish them and on checking has found a problem, then s/he does have to ask fairly robustly what's going on, as s/he is accountable for the work (especially if funded as part of a larger grant) done in that lab.

I think your friends are right - you need to do the literature review and methodology chapters before you start fieldwork, even if you later end up revising them substantially. Why - because the most messed up, drawn out PhDs I know were when people rushed into fieldwork and later realised they'd not done it in a methodologically justifiable manner or hadn't asked the right thing. With human subjects you normally only get one chance to interview / survey them - it's not like a lab where you can repeat experiements. You need really to have identified the gaps in the literature to make sure your work is original and that you know enough about the methods others have used to make reflective choices. It really can end up as a more haste, less speed outcome if you try to skip these steps. You will almost certainly need a literature review completed for your annual review / upgrade process at the end of year 1 - it's also worth making sure you know exactly what is required, as it takes time if you've not planned for it.

Hi Matt,

In answer to your question, yes approach the publishers of the journals in question - the copyright will probably rest with them. It''s 70 years in the European Economic Area so unfortunately your 1959 piece is still covered. It is the online version of the thesis that's the issue, not the print version. http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/ora/oxford_etheses/copyright_and_other_legal_issues/copyright_held_by_third_parties__and__other_rights - some good advice on the specifics for theses and links from Oxford on this link.

Hazyjane isabsolutely right with her advice to ask other researchers or your supervisor. Here's some info to give you an idea of warning signs of this sort of thing in the future:
http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/Teaching/learning/junk.conferences.html
I seem to remember from your other posts that you're a masters students applying for PhDs at the moment, if so have a look at whatever the main UK association for your subject is and see if they have a postgraduate conference - these are normally subsidised, so would be a respectable place to present your work without incurring much more expense, seeing as you've already lost out financially with this scam.

I can think of three reasons why it might be so long, but in each case, I rather doubt it's your supervisor who would be able to authorise such a long embargo - normally it would be a university committee / the dean of research making such a decision, so you might want to be careful before accusing your supervisor.
1) copyright - have you got permission to reproduce any previously published work, or figures / images etc taken from other people's work? It might be other people's copyright here that is the problem.
2) data protection - can human subjects be identified? This would actually be a serious problem and justify a lengthy embargo.
3) National security - I have read a permanently embargoed Oxford thesis - the bits deemed a national security risk are blacked out, the rest of the text is available.
Where I work at least, anything over two year's embargo has to go right to the top of the university for approval, and the longest I've heard of being given for commercial reasons was 2 years, which is what makes me suspect that it might be something else.

I've never been a research fellow like this but two friends had differing experiences - I'll tell them in the hope that one might be relevant. In the first case, it was a fixed term 1 year post with the possibility of extension if he brought in funding (no luck in the end). He was expected to publish from his PhD while awaiting the results. He found it quite an isolating experience - there was no mentoring or any sense that anyone was really interested in him. The second case was where a friend joined a research centre on an open-ended contract. Basically she was expected to act as a research assistant on other already-funded projects while applying to be a PI herself. There was quite a lot of flexibility expected of her, but on the other hand so long as there was grant money coming in somewhere, they kept her on even though her initial applications were unsuccessful.

I remember when I finished mine, it felt like a massive anti-climax and although I had a job to go to and so was busy, it was strange to reimagine life without the PhD as an ever-present thing on my mind. I suspect it's because you've suddenly got brain space to fret about smaller things that that is why you're finding they get to you more. You've also moved back home after a long time abroad. I've done this and I think it was harder than moving abroad originally! Not least because it's meant to be so much easier. I think if you google reverse culture shock, you will feel better - or at least realise you're not the only one to suffer! Yes you can and will readjust but it will take time.