December 1, 2021

Writing as an imaginary conversation with your reader

It’s the end of #acwrimo!! Did you take part in Academic Writing Month this year? I certainly did. It was lockdown, so this year we made a big deal of it at ANU. Not to put too fine a point on it, I taught my ass off. You can see some of the workshops Icontinue reading.

July 7, 2021

The art of the ‘cold call’ email

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 andcontinue reading.

May 5, 2021

How to make your dissertation ‘speak’ to experts

Most people come into a PhD program with well developed writing skills but a  dissertation – or as it is called in Australia, a Thesis, is a very particular kind of writing challenge. All thesis writers must bend their existing skills to the appropriate ‘thesis style’. Ironically, the people I have seen struggle the mostcontinue reading.