Dr Rod Benson, 4 October 2024
There are three kinds of research student: those who start researching and writing and are crawling or sprinting toward the finish line, those who give up in defeat, and those who finish writing and submit their work. If you’re thinking of giving up, read on!
There are many reasons for non-completion of a research thesis, and many of those reasons are avoidable. Browse these six blogs for helpful and comprehensive information, empathy, and wise advice in bucketloads—empowering you to snatch sweet victory from the jaws of scholarly defeat and submit that thesis or dissertation on time.
All the academics/researchers associated with these blogs are present on social media such as X, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
1. Patter
Pat Thomson posts weekly on research education, all aspects of the research process including academic writing, conference speaking, public engagement, funding, and a host of eccentricities. Her blog backlist is voluminous and packed with succinct information and advice.
Thomson has published books based on the blog posts such as Writing for Peer Reviewed Journals (2013), and Refining Your Academic Writing: Strategies for Reading, Revising and Rewriting (2023), both of which are in the Moore College Library collection.
Pat Thomson is Professor of Education in the School of Education at The University of Nottingham. Her blog is archived by the British Library.
Similar to Patter, and equally relevant and comprehensive, The Thesis Whisperer is written by Tasmanian-born academic Inger Mewburn. The blog boasts more than 12 million hits and new posts drop on the first Wednesday of the month. You can subscribe for notifications of new content by email.
Professor Inger Mewburn is director of researcher development at The Australian National University, Canberra. She is known for her research on doctoral education, research student experiences, post-PhD employment pathways, and digital scholarship.
Among other academic titles, Professor Mewburn is author of How to Be an Academic: The Thesis Whisperer Reveals All (2017), available from Moore College Library.
3. PhD Life
The curators of this site aim to create an online community for anyone and everyone who identifies with the doctoral research and writing process. Use the search function to identify topics of interest, or browse these four sections:
PhD Basics is the place for advice on note-taking, working with your supervisors, the research process, writing up, or your viva.
And Beyond is for all the PhD activity you get involved in beyond those necessities: from publishing to attending conferences, networking and social media presence.
Looking after you and your PhD is a blend of posts on time management, organisation skills and student mental wellbeing. And Your Experiences gathers “all the wonderful tales from our bloggers, featuring topics on everything and anything.”
Originating in Adelaide, Australia, DoctoralWriting describes itself as a collection of approximately 400 blog posts written between 2012-2023 by, and for, people who are interested in doctoral writing.
It’s 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. Use the search box at the top of the page to explore the rich content.
The editors are Dr Claire Aitchison, now at the Teaching Innovation Unit at the University of South Australia, Dr Cally Guerin, who works in Researcher Development at the Australian National University, and Associate Professor Susan Carter from the School of Critical Studies in Higher Education at the University of Auckland.
Here Tanya Golash-Boza, a prolific academic writer, shares advice drawn from her own life experiences and from talking to other researchers and writers, “to help you balance life and work and attain a happier life on the tenure track.”
Use the search tool to find a wide range of helpful information, reflection and advice relating to the research process and student wellbeing. Blog posts have been less frequent in recent years, but the collection of posts remains relevant.
Tanya is Professor of Sociology at the University of California in Merced, CA. Check out her official website here.
According to the author, Rachael Cayley, “Explorations of Style offers readers an ongoing discussion of the challenges of academic writing … [It] discusses strategies to improve the process of expressing our research in writing… I aim to engage with ongoing conversations about issues such as the future of graduate education; the practices of writing instruction; the state of academic publishing; the role of English in global academic conversation; the notion of grammatical purity; and the way that technological shifts may change our relationships to academic texts.”
Browse recent posts or look for key topics using the search box on the main page. There is a helpful introduction for new visitors arranged according to ten themes: Drafting; Revision; Audience; Identity; Writing Challenges; Mechanics; Productivity; Graduate Writing; Blogging and Social Media; and Resources.
Rachael Cayley is a faculty member of the Graduate Centre for Academic Communication at the University of Toronto.
Dr Rod Benson is Research Support Officer at Moore Theological College, Sydney. He previously pastored four Baptist churches in Queensland and NSW, and served for 12 years as an ethicist with the Tinsley Institute at Morling College.
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