About

ABOUT

DoctoralWriting is a collection of some 400 blog posts, written between 2012-2023, by, and for, people who are interested in doctoral writing. This website is a rich resource of information, teaching materials, inspirational ideas, and practical advice created in a spirit of building knowledge and skills around higher degree research writing.

You might be supporting research students in doctoral writing or ‘academic literacies’, or be a researcher in this field. You could be a research student supervisor or a person who is responsible for professional development in researcher education. You might be a research student yourself.

Whatever your official role or title, it is likely you will find this library of resources invaluable for enriching your writing knowledge, skills and practices.

What’s the origin story of DoctoralWriting blog?

DoctoralWriting began in April 2012 in Adelaide, Australia, at the Quality in Postgraduate Research (QPR) Conference. QPR is a biennial conference attended by academics, administrators and research candidates involved in doctoral education. In the closing moments of the Conference Claire Aitchison proposed a Special Interest Group as a forum for connecting like-minded people. Cally Guerin, Susan Carter and Inger Mewburn put up their hands to help. Inger (aka the Thesis Whisperer) was an invaluable guide, mentor and friend as we learned how to manage the blog ourselves. We remain indebted.

DoctoralWriting was instigated, authored and edited by Claire Aitchison, Susan Carter, Cally Guerin. Initially we posted new blogs each week building a huge library of posts. Over time our following has grown and evolved.  We’ve expanded our networks and included numerous contributing guest authors and like-minded bloggers, becoming part of an evolving scholarship and vibrant community of practitioners on doctoral writing.

The Editors

Dr Claire Aitchison has worked in researcher education and as an academic developer for many years. She is now at the Teaching Innovation Unit at the University of South Australia. She freelances when she can. Contact: Claire.Aitchison@unisa.edu.au.

Dr Cally Guerin works in Researcher Development at the Australian National University. Contact: Cally.Guerin@anu.edu.au

Associate Professor Susan Carter is from the School of Critical Studies in Higher Education at the University of Auckland. Contact: S.Carter@auckland.ac.nz