• About
    • Cally Guerin
    • Claire Aitchison
    • Susan Carter
  • Contact us

DoctoralWriting SIG

DoctoralWriting SIG

Category Archives: 5. Identity & Emotion

Life online: Zoom survival and etiquette in supervision

20 Monday Jul 2020

Posted by doctoralwriting in 5. Identity & Emotion

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

meeting your supervisor online, Supervising online, zoom ettiquette

Claire Aitchison

Can you see me?  She’s muted, she can’t hear you. Turn up your volume.  Write it into the chat function. Hello – can you hear me? That background is amazing.  I still can’t see you.  Down on the bottom, on the left, the picture of a microphone: press it.  And, so it goes – even still, even 100s of zoom meetings later…

Before Corona, whether in the laboratory or the office, by chance or scheduled, most supervisors met with their students face to face on campus. With students readily on hand, the expectation was for synchronous, physically co-present meetings – and for most, there was simply no need to consider alternatives. However, virtual supervision had been increasing with the growth in transnational doctoral study options and to meet the need for student and supervisor flexibility more generally. With the Covid-19 pandemic, what was a trend, now seems quite routine.

So, how do we best operate in this new environment? What are the etiquettes, traps and advantages of virtual meetings and of giving and receiving feedback on virtual platforms such as zoom? Continue reading →

Supporting students through the “messy times” of finishing the dissertation: Voices of completers

07 Tuesday Jul 2020

Posted by doctoralwriting in 3. Writing Practices, 5. Identity & Emotion

≈ 1 Comment

We are delighted to share this contribution from Mary Jane Curry who is an associate professor in the Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development at the University of Rochester, New York. She is co-author or co-editor of six books, including Global academic publishing: Policies, perspectives and pedagogies (2018), Language, literacy, and learning in STEM education: Research methods and perspectives from applied linguistics (2014), A scholar’s guide to getting published in English: Critical choices and practical strategies (2013) and with six doctoral students is currently writing “An A-W of academic literacy: A reference for graduate students” (2021). With Theresa Lillis, Mary Jane co-edits the book series Studies in Knowledge Production and Participation (Multilingual Matters).

Mary Jane Curry 

Like marathon runners, students at the end stages of writing the doctoral dissertation/thesis often struggle with exhaustion and motivation. While I have never run a marathon, 20 years ago I completed my dissertation, and have thought deeply about how to support doctoral students. Recently I asked some former advisees—now graduated—to identify the strategies and practices that helped them.  Like many students in our school of education, all of them had children/families, many were part-time students, and most were working, even the full-time students. Some also cared for aging parents and other relatives. Two students had to move away from Rochester for family reasons before finishing. Continue reading →

Experience matters: mindfulness and doctoral education

17 Monday Feb 2020

Posted by doctoralwriting in 3. Writing Practices, 5. Identity & Emotion

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Mindfullness and writing experiences, overcoming writers' block

Our guest author this week is Dr Michelle Jamieson – a Higher Degree Research Learning Advisor at Macquarie University, Australia, with a special interest in the role experience plays in doing research. As a mindfulness practitioner and medical sociologist, her work explores how mindfulness can help students to develop balanced work practices, healthy ways of relating to themselves and greater joy in the research process. She is the author of the blog www.themindfulresearcher.com.

Over the past few years, I’ve noticed that no matter what teaching setting I’m in, discussions of the technical aspects of thesis writing often quickly turn into conversations about experience. Whenever students are given space to reflect on their work or ask for help, they’re keen to share their own (and hear about others’) experiences of the research process. Continue reading →

Finding certainty in an uncertain world – how writing can help

09 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by doctoralwriting in 3. Writing Practices, 5. Identity & Emotion

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

certainty through writing, qualitative research writing, writing and meaning-making

By Claire Aitchison

As I explore this idea I’m thinking primarily – but not wholly – of qualitative researchers who must learn to live with a high degree of uncertainty. Of course, to be admitted and/or proceed with their project most doctoral scholars will need to write convincingly about their research design, describing the aim, research questions and method. Quite rightly, everyone takes this first account very seriously. Supervisors and students will work to make the research proposal as accurate as possible—after all, it will be the basis for years of work ahead. Students are encouraged to make clear decisions and write with certainty—even though we know for qualitative researchers there is a degree to which these declarations of intent may be a bit of a charade. What I mean by this is that, although a research proposal proclaims with confidence the nature and purpose of the investigation to be undertaken, in truth, the newly minted doctoral student (and their supervisor) may secretly concede the text holds plausible degrees of uncertainty. Continue reading →

The plan and the eventual reality

09 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by doctoralwriting in 3. Writing Practices, 5. Identity & Emotion

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

planning writing, Structuring time, Writing schedules

by Katrien Pickles

Today our guest blogger is Katrien, a family studies researcher, picture book author and swimming teacher. She was raised on the Big Island of Hawai’i and now lives in Wagga Wagga, Australia. Katrien’s doctoral research is on family wellbeing and public playgrounds. Here she reflects on how to plan for the unexpected in research and writing.

When I began my PhD, I read a lot about being organised: how to set up an EndNote library; how to save the impossible amount of articles you will end up downloading; how to securely store your data; and, most importantly, how to manage your time. I created a Gantt chart, included clearly delineated writing time, and felt like a super-hero. Truly, you have no idea how big a deal that is. My husband was confused because the person he married had a deep hatred of Excel. I even colour-coded the months and tasks!

Throughout my experience in doing the PhD, two seemingly opposing themes have emerged: the planned ideal and the eventual reality. You can start out with high hopes, rooted in your ideal version of the research. Continue reading →

How many research languages do you speak? (The answer may surprise you)

02 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by doctoralwriting in 2. Grammar/Voice/Style, 5. Identity & Emotion

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Academic languages and registers, Research languages

Our guest blogger this week is Ailsa Naismith, a third-year PhD student at the University of Bristol, England. Ailsa is researching the active Fuego volcano in Guatemala through satellite imagery and interviews, looking to discover why the volcano erupts and how previous eruptions have been experienced by local people. We have thoroughly enjoyed her thought-provoking reflections on “research languages”—and we’re sure you will too. 

Ailsa can be found on Twitter (@AilsaNaismith) and through the occasional blog post (www.reasoningwithvolcanoes.com).

What language do you do research in? If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that it’s English, this being the “lingua franca” of much of the academic world. So far, so conventional. But – wait! Could it be that you are secretly more talented than you think? (Based on the overwhelming proportion of doctoral students that reportedly experience Imposter Syndrome, versus what it actually takes to achieve a PhD, the answer is probably “Yes”.)

Despite our fears and reservations, throughout the years we spend studying we learn a wide range of research skills, from communicating our ideas with confidence, through networking, to presenting our arguments clearly in written form. I think these skills can be viewed as a group of “languages” in which we become fluent during our training. Continue reading →

← Older posts

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts.

Join 16,913 other followers

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

Categories

  • 1. The Thesis/Dissertation
  • 2. Grammar/Voice/Style
  • 3. Writing Practices
  • 4. Publication
  • 5. Identity & Emotion
  • 6. Community Reports
  • All Posts

Events

  • British Educational Research Association Conference
  • EARLI (European Association for Research and Learning and Instruction)
  • HERDSA Conference (Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia)
  • Quality in Postgraduate Research (QPR) Conference
  • The Society for Research into Higher Education Conference

More people like us

  • AcWriMo (Academic Writing Month)
  • AILA Research Network on academic publishing
  • Association for Academic Language and Learning (AALL)
  • Consortium on Graduate Communication
  • Doctoral Teaching SIG
  • Explorations of Style: A Blog about Academic Writing
  • patter
  • PhD2Published
  • Research Whisperer
  • ThesisLink
  • Thesiswhisperer
  • Writing for Research
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy