Category: Miscellany

Dear Readers, The summer/winter holidays are upon us and we have come to the end of yet another year of Thesis Whisperer posts! This year I published 50 posts, which have travelled far and wide. There have been 1.3 million views from 780,000 unique visitors, in addition to the weekly mail out to around 30,000 …continue reading.

This post is by Belinda Lawton who is doing a PhD in the Crawford School at the Australian National University Struggling with balance isn’t new for me; I’ve always been a full-throttle, grab-life-by-the-shoulders-and-shake kind of person. So when it came to starting my PhD, saying yes to opportunities to learn and stretch myself alongside the …continue reading.

This post is by Lara Skelly, who graduated about a year ago now I graduated with a doctorate in April this year. “It must feel fantastic”, people say, “you must feel so free”, and “what’s next?” Here’s the thing though: it doesn’t, and I have no idea what to do next. I’ve had a different …continue reading.

This post was sent to me by Nevin, who prefers to remain partially anonymous. “If you work hard enough, you can achieve anything”. “If you put your mind to it, and stick with it, you can do it”. “Pain is temporary, quitting lasts forever”. “You cannot dig yourself out of a hole”. The clock in …continue reading.

Imagine my constant surprise, seven years later, at how much still remains unsaid about doing a thesis – even about the basics, such as how to get into a PhD program. Consider this letter which, eerily, happened to land in my inbox just as I was preparing my pitch for prospective students for ANU Open …continue reading.

This post is by Dr Anna McFarlane. Anna is a postdoctoral researcher on the Wellcome Trust-funded Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities project at the University of Glasgow. She is the co-editor of Vector: The Critical Journal of the British Science Fiction Association and Adam Roberts: Critical Essays (Gylphi, 2016). In this post Anna tackles …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.

Like many millions of people, I have watched the Syrian refugee crisis unfold and felt helpless to act. But until my friend Eva Alisic contacted me, I had never thought specifically about how we might be able to use our skills as researchers and academics to help. Eva Alisic is Co-Chair of the Global Young …continue reading.

This post is by DrJanene Carey, a freelance writer and editor based in Armidale NSW. She occasionally teaches academic writing at the University of New England and often edits academic theses, articles and reports. Her website is http://www.janenecarey.com Arguably, this question is a classic time waster and the student who poses it should be told …continue reading.

This post is by Anastasija Ropa, who did her doctoral research at the School of English, Bangor University, UK. Her doctoral research was in the Arthurian and Grail quest studies, involving the study of such issues as death, female authority as well as family and global history in medieval and modern versions of the Grail …continue reading.