Category: You and your supervisor

Academics are always worried about having their ideas ‘stolen’. This deep cultural anxiety affects PhD students more than almost any other member of the community. There’s a good reason why PhD students should be anxious about protecting their ideas – examination. A PhD is meant to be a signal that you’re fit to be a …continue reading.

The best blog post topics come from emails like the one I got a couple of weeks ago, from an international student studying at an Australian university. Here is the student’s dilemma: The questions might be naive, but I do want to learn more about the “Australian” way of sending regards to supervisors. My supervisor invited …continue reading.

Content warning – this post contains details and discussion of sexual assault and harassment. For more information and services, please visit the ANU Respectful relationships page. Yesterday we got a damning report on sexual harrassment and assault in Australian universities.  It’s truly harrowing reading. I’m not going to recap the report, you should read it …continue reading.

This post is by Paula Hanasz, who has recently completed a PhD on transboundary water conflict and cooperation in South Asia. Paula has worked as a national security consultant and continues to provide freelance social research, business writing, stakeholder engagement and policy analysis services to government and NGO clients. We previously met Paula when she …continue reading.

This post is by Associate Professor Evonne Miller, the Director of Research Training for the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. She detests meetings and leans towards the hands-off supervision style, but her students will attest that she is passionate about their research and does yell at them (kindly) when needed. …continue reading.

How do you choose the right supervisor? How do you know if it might be time for a change? In this post Associate Professor Evonne Miller offers a check list of qualities of an awesome supervisor. I now blog with Evonne over at The Supervision Whisperers where the tagline is “Just like the Thesis Whisperer, …continue reading.

All over Australia, new PhD candidates are starting their degree. Welcome! You might value this advice from Katy Williams who passed her PhD in Biological Anthropology at the University of Durham in February this year. Katy Williams was born in America, raised all over the world, and studied at universities in England. Between 2011 and …continue reading.

This post is by my twin sister Anitra Nottingham. It will not surprise you that Anitra is an academic too and supervises people doing masters of fine art in communication. In the past she has told us how her thesis was a cupcake, not a dragon and about her experiences learning Derrida. In this post …continue reading.

This post is by Dr Catherine Ayers, who was a PhD candidate in the School of Sociology at the Australian National University, researching the multiple and sometimes conflicting ways we conceptualise and experience ‘Nature’, specifically in the realm of national parks and other protected areas. She has been known to nerd it up as an …continue reading.

Ah email… blessing or curse of contemporary academic life? The letter below describes a common email problem between students and supervisors. My response to this letter dwells on the importance of lunch, amongst other things. Hi Inger I follow your Thesis Whisperer blog and I have a question for you about email contact with supervisors. …continue reading.