Category: Miscellany

Recently, some colleagues and I released a paper about the experiences of neurodivergent PhD students. It’s a systematic review of the literature to date, which is currently under review, but available via pre-print here. Doing this paper was an exercise in mixed feelings. It was an absolute joy to work with my colleagues, who knew …continue reading.

There’s been a lot of … stuff going on at my university lately (just Google “Australian National University” on the news setting and you’ll see what I mean). People are, to put it mildly, upset. So upset that they’ve taken to writing articles for and against said management in our local city newspaper, The Canberra …continue reading.

Waking up in 2025 is weird. Take this morning as just one example. I open my eyes and immediately fumble for the phone, opening BlueSky and Threads to see what craziness has come out from the USA while I slept here in Australia. Reassuring myself that we are all still alive (well, some of us …continue reading.

The other day, my good friend Professor Narelle Lemon sent me a link to an academic paper called “AI and its implications for research in higher education: a critical dialogue”  because it cited … one of my old blog posts. It’s a good paper, and open access, so I recommend having a read. It’s written …continue reading.

By now regular readers will know I’m obsessed with how academics work. Maybe it’s because I’m constantly trying to figure out how to work better myself (aren’t we all?). Or perhaps it’s because I’ve spent years watching brilliant people struggle with the demands of academic life. Whatever the reason, I’m thrilled to announce that my …continue reading.

If I started Thesis Whisperer today, 10th of July 2023, you would never hear about me. I built a readership in my little corner of academia, and some measure of influence, by sharing my work online. When people ask how I got to 100,000 followers on social media, I used to share two tips: 1) …continue reading.

So, we made it to the end of the year! We’re coming up to the third anniversary of the first death from Covid (January 11th 2020, in case you were wondering). I don’t know about you, but this year of the pandemic has felt more exhausting than the others. Perhaps it’s because there’s been a …continue reading.

A little content warning for this one friends – I mention my own mental health in the context of talking about the future of the Whisperer. If you want to skip it, I understand and would appreciate you considering filling in my reader survey here. The link will appear again below the explanation that follows.  …continue reading.

Email is the lifeblood of university communications: quick, easy, painless… and so very easy to get wrong. We humans are a curious lot. We are highly social creatures but idiosyncratic. There is a lot of love, but also a lot of jostling for status and power. Academia, with its deeply middle class, coded language and …continue reading.

We made it. 2020 is about to be over. Before a year in review post, a special announcement: As regular readers know, for over 10 years now I have run the Thesis Whisperer blog as a ‘not for loss’ model, where I donate excess above operating costs to charity. This year, as an explicit christmas …continue reading.