When you are a grad student, things can get difficult. The quality of work you do for a graduate degree is much higher than what you did as an undergrad. You are expected to learn how to research, how to write and how to do a number of other tasks. You will be honing your skills, and learning how to better manage your time and improve your career. There is a lot to learn as you go through grad school.
June 22, 2011
May 13, 2011
Development of an idea
Inger and I were using Twitter to discuss a new book: Mapping Your Thesis: The comprehensive manual of theory and techniques for masters’ and doctoral research, which is being sold at $89.95, far out of the reach of most students. I suggested it could have been offered online for less.
January 21, 2011
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Recent Posts
- It's done!
- It's over!
- A sad goodbye
- Cautionary tales
- Marginalised in PhD land « The Thesis Whisperer
- From a workmate: liminality
- The Path Forward: The Future of Graduate Education in the United States
- Amanda Krauss -- Guest Post: How College Died - Worst Professor Ever
- Careers for PhDs beyond academia | Money | The Guardian
- Lonely PhD student? Just log in
My list pages
Presently reading...
Claire Aitchison, Barbara Kamler, Alison Lee: Publishing Pedagogies for the Doctorate and Beyond
Penny Tinkler and Carolyn Jackson: The Doctoral Examination Process
Heavily weighted toward viva, but useful chapters. Very nicely presented to limit mystification of process.Malcolm Ashmore: The Reflexive Thesis: Wrighting Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
deep, man.Allaine Cerwonka: Improvising Theory: Process and Temporality in Ethnographic Fieldwork
Fascinating insight into the processs of a PhD, plus interesting theoretical insights from an ethnographerDavid Boud and Alison Lee (eds): Changing Practices of Doctoral Education
Excellent and useful collection of essays (****)Annette Markham and Nancy Baym: Internet Inquiry: Conversations About Method
Interesting structure to this book. Each chapter consists of an article, followed by a response, followed by a second response from the author. So it really is a conversation. (****)Barbara Kamler & Pat Thomson: Helping Doctoral Students Write:: Pedagogies For Supervision
Best. Book. Yet. Bloody Brilliant. Combines pedagogical thinking, post-structuralist ideas about writing/identity and practical advice (*****)Carolyn Ellis: The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography (Ethnographic Alternatives Book Series)
Better than I'd thought it would be. Ellis isn't a skilled novelist but she is a storyteller and has created a workmanlike and occasionally absorbing book that describes autoethnography by doing it. But didactic nature of subject gets in the way. (***)Mary Chayko: Connecting: How We Form Social Bonds and Communities in the Internet Age
Excellent overview that puts internet communities into the context of both our everyday and less usual relationships (*****)Laurel Richardson: Fields of Play: (Constructing an Academic Life)
Interesting retrospective by Richardson over her academic careeer, using the writing she has done to give the perspective. Good exemplars of reflective writing and interesting as a history of the difficulty faced by a qualitative researcher as her discipline developed in the second half of the 20th century. (***)Axel Bruns and Joanne Jacobs: Uses of Blogs (Digital Formations)
Several useful chapters (eg Halvais) including Toril Mortenson reflecting on her earlier seminal article (***)Ruth Behar: The Vulnerable Observer : Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart
Some wonderful essays. The Girl in the Cast is my favourite, and I also liked Anthropology that Breaks your heart. (****)Annette N. Markham: Life Online: Researching real experience in virtual space
(*****)Christine Hine (ed): Virtual Methods
Variable contributions, some not well-thought through. But many are cutting-edge and all seem to have at least one interesting insight for me. (****)Tara Brabazon: Digital Hemlock: Internet Education and the Poisoning of Teaching
Tara's book is largely a rant, and an ill-informed one from my end of time. This is pre-Web2.0, of course. But her chapter on virtual communities may be useful. (**)- Alison Lee and Carolyn Williams: Forged in Fire
Seminal starting point for the framing of PhD as performance. (*****) - Lesley Johnson, Lee & Green: The PhD and the autonomous self: Gender, rationality and postgraduate pedagogy
More about the performance of PhD (****) - David Boud and Alison Lee: 'Peer learning' as pedagogic discourse for research education
Christopher Hart: Doing a Literature Review : Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination
Etienne Wenger: Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity
Norman K. Denzin & Yvonna S. Lincoln: Handbook of Qualitative Research
Chapters 1,- Ruth Neumann, 2003: The Doctoral Education Experience: Diversity and Complexity
www.dest.gov.au/sectors/higher_education/publications_resources/profiles/doctoral_education_experience.htm (****)
Useful sites
- Aust Govt Higher ed publications and resources main page
- DDOGS pages
- RCCS: Book Reviews Index (updated monthly)
- Postgraduate research studies handbook - Future postgraduate - The University of Sydney
- Fibreculture Journal
- Sydney doctoral students by faculty
- Quality in Postgraduate Research
- University of Sydney Library - Home Page
- Sociological Research Online - Home Page
- WebSurveyMethodology
Important files
Categories
- blogs/blogging
- Books
- Communities of Practice
- Completion
- cyberpsych/embodiment/performance
- examination/submission
- history
- liminality
- mutual support
- my articles, presentations etc
- narrative theory
- Nature of PhD
- online ethnography
- PG/research pedagogy
- PhD in Aus (background)
- power/supervision
- practical matters
- presentations
- reflexivity
- Social practice
- Sydney stuff
- tangential but interesting
- Thesis structure
- Writing issues