Helen Sword is, hands down, one of the best writers on academic writing working today. The difference between Sword and other people working the writing advice patch is that she uses an interesting range of research approaches to inform her work. A new book from Sword is a nerdishly exciting moment for research educators like […]
Category Archives: Book Reviews
We read books on doing a PhD so you don’t have to
Some writing projects just take a long time. In academia this is always true, but this particular project had a more painful birthing process than most… Nearly two years ago now, Chris McMaster approached me to help him get together a book on post graduate study in Australia, written by students themselves. The book was […]
I have a large, ever growing, pile of books sent to me by publishers in the hope that I will review them. Smart publishers know that I have an interest in helping you make best use of your (probably limited) book buying budget. I’m even thought to have quite a lot of influence in the […]
I’m in the enviable position of having a blog with a wide readership (thank you) which means I get sent review copies by publishers. Everyone at work gets jealous when a book package arrives and I feel like a rock star. This is a good feeling. On the other hand, there are only so many […]
Thesis Whisperer Jnr was eight months old when I started my Masters degree by research at RMIT and was seven years old when I graduated with my PhD from the University of Melbourne. In retrospect, the decision to go back to post graduate study with a very young child seems slightly insane, but I remember […]
If you follow the narratives of the PhD in the mainstream media you can get really depressed. All the reports are so negative on your job prospects. What’s a PhD student to do? Well, some clever people are turning their minds to the problem and this post concerns a new book on the subject. Normally […]
I know you all have a lot of reading to do, so p art of our mission here at the Whisperer is to do some of the reading for you and bring you book reviews which might be of interest. This book represented a conflict of interest for me as I have a chapter in […]
Here at the Whisperer we know you read a lot, so we try to do some of the reading for you. There’s a lot of books out there on doing a PhD and being an academic – which ones should you buy? If you are a regular reader you will know that Pat Thomson and […]
Here at the Whisperer we try to make your life easier by reading books and doing reviews. We try to review books which would appeal to most researchers, but some of the books we get sent have more specific audiences in mind. “Ethics and Values in Social research” by Paul Ransome is clearly designed for […]
I started my PhD at the University of Melbourne in early 2006 and finished in 2009. I did well, collecting the John Grice Award for best thesis in my faculty and coming second for the university medal (dammit!). I attribute this success to two ‘how to’ books in particular: Evans and Gruba’s “How to write […]
