Writing Workshop

On the 20th of June, the Hive Scholars ran a workshop on writing a doctoral dissertation. This provided an opportunity for doctoral researchers to share experiences  from writing their thesis, including the challenges and hints and tips. Researchers face with difficulties which are contingent on their discipline (e.g. different conventions of writing), educational background and various personal factors including writing in English as an additional language. Nevertheless, there were some similar experiences identified among the participants including problems of distraction, procrastination, perfectionism, and knowing what exactly is expected of us. We discussed different solutions that some have found helpful - but others feel would involve a complete change of writing approach or lifestyle. Comments would be welcome on this post as to what others have found works or doesn't work in enabling the writing process.

Sarah Robins-Hobden from the doctoral school provided a list of resources, reproduced below, which was shared with those present.

WRITING RESOURCES

Writing workshops at Sussex

•    Writing tips for researchers: simple secrets to revitalise your research
•    Finding a voice for academic writing (one session for Arts, Humanitiess & Social Sciences; one for Sciences)
•    Writing your thesis (sessions held for each school)
•    Preparing a paper for publication
•    Writing a journal article

Book a place / join a waiting list for these workshops via the Doctoral School website.

Online resources at Sussex (only available with a Sussex username and password)

•    Turbocharge your writing – recorded lecture from Hugh Kearns. Published on the ‘E-learning for Researchers’ site on Study Direct. 
•    FAQs: The Thesis – FAQs on the topic of the thesis at Sussex: style, binding, PDF copy, proofreading and copyright.
•    Copyright and your thesis – full information and resources on copyright and other potential issues for your thesis now that it will be published online.

External resources

•    Patter – blog by Professor Pat Thomson (Nottingham) http://patthomson.wordpress.com/author/patthomson/
•    The Thesis Whisperer – blog and resources by Dr Inger Mewburn (RMIT, Melbourne) http://thesiswhisperer.com/
•    Writing your thesis – great resources and guidance from Vitae