Online resources for doctoral writers: an annotated bibliography

great resource list

DoctoralWriting

Our guest blogger is Siân Lund from the Royal College of Art PG Art and Design college in the UK.She has been the EAP (English for Academic Purposes) Coordinator for almost 6 years. She has a background in language education and is passionate about exploring diversity in communication with a special interest in acculturation processes. At the RCA she is responsible for providing Academic Literacies support for all students at MA and Doctoral level as well as promoting pedagogic strategies for enhancing learning.

By Siân Lund

While building up support in academic literacies skills for our students, I was struck by distinct epistemologies of Art and Design disciplines and how this impacts on the way students develop their research and writing. Through interviews with staff, I recognised the importance of a reflective process of enquiry underpinning the research process in these fields. Tutors often expect the students’ experiences, inspirations and…

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What is Autoethnography?

Critical autoethnography briefly

QualPage

Researchers are usually familiar with the term “ethnography”, which is a research approach that examines culture through being there. Ethnographers typically embed themselves in settings and observe what is going on. They get to know participants over extended periods of time, use interviews to understand participants’ perspectives about their lives and cultures, and perhaps collect and analyze archival data and artifacts.  Some researches make use of video and still images as well. Anthropologists (Geertz, 1973, 2000), sociologists (Desmond, 2016; Duneier, 1999; Goffman, 2014), and researchers across disciplines (Ho, 2009; Pollock, 2004; Whyte, 1993 [1943]) have used ethnography as an approach to examine numerous cultural contexts. So what then, is autoethnography?

Autoethnography is typically defined as an approach to research that puts the self at the center of cultural analysis. Chang (2008) asserts that autoethnography “transcends mere narration of self to engage in cultural analysis and interpretation” (p. 43). She…

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The home: a complex location for doctoral carers

Caring for the carer candidate

A community blog, on doctoral supervision relationships and pedagogies

This is a guest post by Dr James Burford (@jiaburford), Lecturer at La Trobe University, and Co-Founder of the Conference Inference blog, which discusses the role and meaning of academic conferences. In this post James argues that space and care responsibilities are important factors that shape the conditions for doctoral education and discusses the role supervisors can play in supporting their supervisees no matter their spatial and care arrangements.

Across the COVID-19 pandemic many doctoral researchers transitioned to working from home. As university campuses emptied of much human activity, home spaces often became noisier and more hectic. This was especially true for households where multiple people needed to be online working or learning at once. As a research educator working primarily with graduate researcher cohorts, I witnessed this transition from the vantage point of my zoom square. Colleagues beamed in from spare rooms, kitchen tables, bedrooms, garages, backyards…

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More JEDI needed in PhD supervision

Justice Equity Diversity Inclusion (JEDI) in HE

A community blog, on doctoral supervision relationships and pedagogies

This is part one of a double bill on supervision and diversity, by Dr Jessica Gagnon (@Jess_Gagnon) an educational sociologist, focused on inequalities in higher education. She has worked in higher education in the US and UK for more than 20 years. Jessica is a first-generation student from an American working-class, single mother family. She currently serves as co-chair for the Gender and Education Association, an international, intersectional feminist academic charity founded in 1997, focused on achieving gender equality within and through education. Later this week, the second part to this post will share a wealth of ideas for supervisor practice.

Content note: This blog post discusses and references systemic inequalities, bullying, harassment, gender-based violence.

Our universities are very good at talking about diversity, but good intentions are not good enough when systemic inequalities still persist. What does that mean for those of us who serve as supervisors…

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