Earlier this week I published a review of a new book by Dr Richard Hil called “Whackademia”. The book makes a pointed critique of the Australian Higher Education system for an excessively casualised workforce. A couple of months ago Jen Tsen Kwok, a PhD student at the University of Queensland and a Policy and Research Officer at the National Education Tertiary Union (NTEU) joined us in a live #phdchat on Twitter to talk about just this topic.

I asked Jen if he would like to put some of the data he talked about in a post as a lot of people expressed interest in the figures. This post is twice as long as usual, but I thought it was important to give sufficient space to sketch out the issues – knowledge is power after all! I want to thank Jen for taking the time to write this for us.

The path to academic nirvana was not easy, in fact it was ridiculously hard. So when @sarahstow showed me the blurb for ‘Whackademia: an insider’s account of the troubled university” I immediately left the office to buy a copy, solely on the promise in the title. I’ve sold stuff in supermarkets and book stores, dabbled in the music industry, washed dishes in restaurants, driven courier trucks and cleaned houses in addition to working in architects’ offices. All of this experience has led me to conclude that yes – academia IS a whacky place to work…

A little discussed aspect of PhD practice turns out to be… really quite interesting.

Recently I wrote a post called “What not to wear: the academic edition” about the trouble I had finding the right dress to wear to give a keynote. I was surprised how many people commented on the post and asked Rosie Findlay, a PhD student researching style blogs, if she would write a follow up …continue reading.

For nearly two years, The Thesis Whisperer has lived on the free WordPress site. This weekend Mr Thesis Whisperer helped me to move the blog to a dedicated domain name: thesiswhisperer.com I love WordPress and I felt it was time I kicked them some money for the great service and software they provide. I paid …continue reading.

The Thesis Whisperer is on sick leave after I was hit by a car late last week…

Like all of you I’m sure, I receive an almost constant stream of invitations to academic events and conferences by email.I rely on mailing lists to keep me informed about what is happening, but lately I have started to get irritated about how difficult event organisers make it for me to share information. I have even started replying with ideas for how they might improve their communications strategy. These replies were, of course, politely worded suggestions.

This is the sarcastic letter I wrote in my head.

As the Thesis Whisperer matures, students who look to it for support are starting to graduate. I always love to hear about their experiences and created the “Dear Thesis Whisperer” section to publish any nuggets of advice they want to share.
This post is from the new Dr Janet Fulton, who completed her PhD last year. Her thesis is titled ‘Making the News: Print journalism and the creative process’.

“I hated Derrida with a red-hot flaming passion of a thousand suns for ooh, about 2 weeks. Then something happened while I was crossing the road …”

This post is co-written with Pat Thomson, who is simultaneously publishing on her blog ‘Patter’. If you haven’t already, head on over there and check it out!