Category: Getting things done

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.

Are you studying part time with a very full life? Yekemi is a part time doctorate (DBA) student in the Department of Marketing at Strathclyde Business School, Glasgow – and very busy person. She worked for General Electric and Schlumberger in senior marketing roles before embarking on her research in innovative outcomes in big data …continue reading.

This post is by Nele Pollatschek (@NRPollatschek), a DPhil (=PhD) candidate at Oxford. A life-long sceptic, Nele’s working on evil and the problem of God’s justice in Victorian literature. In this post, she sounds like a yogi; but in her heart Nele’s a rebel rousing rockstar. Check out her blog, the oxforddphile. Four years ago, while I was writing a paper for my Master’s degree at Oxford, I came …continue reading.

This post is by Jodie Trembath. A PhD student in the school of Culture, History and Languages at the ANU. Update June 2017: This post used to be called “What’s your PhD Totem?”, and I have since asked Inger to take it down and replace it with the version that is there now, on the …continue reading.

This post is by Catherine Ayres, a PhD candidate in the School of Sociology at the Australian National University who is researching the multiple and sometimes conflicting ways we conceptualise and experience ‘Nature’, specifically in the realm of national parks and other protected areas. She also nerds it up as an intern at ANU Research …continue reading.

Academic work can be largely autonomous, so how should you spend your PhD time? What activities are going to give you the best ‘bang for buck’? It’s a question we all struggle with, even when the PhD is done. James Patterson completed his PhD at the University of Queensland, and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow …continue reading.

The discussion chapter is the problem child of the thesis. The chapter most likely to provoke fear, uncertainty and doubt. Not everyone writes a chapter called “discussion”, but everyone has to do discussiony bits because, well – that’s where the creative magic of the PhD happens. The discussion section is scary because you have to …continue reading.

My background in architecture offices has given me a range of time and project management skills that are helpful in my second career as an academic. I think I’m pretty good at working multiple projects with complex dependencies, but moving into a management role at ANU has pushed me to my limit. For years I’ve …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.

Jonathan Downie is currently in the final stages of his PhD on client expectations of interpreters from Heriot-Watt University. Jonathan is a long time contributor to the Whisperer – his most popular piece was on parenting a toddler. This time Jonathan has some good words of advice for the PhD journey. You can read more …continue reading.