Tag Archives: PhD research

Review: Your PhD Survival Guide

I’ve greatly appreciated this practical and thoughtful book, and have already made use of a number of its key ideas in leading a session on the ‘final year’ (quotation marks since for part-time PhD students, it’s frequently more than 12 months)—see my slides here. This review will sketch its key features and themes, and highlight how it can be helpful to both students and supervisors in the final stretch towards submission and the viva/oral defence. The authors are a trio of people who work in Continue reading →

Bravo, Eric Clouston! A new book on Acts in its literary context

Eric Clouston, How Ancient Narratives Persuade: Acts in its Literary ContextLanham, MD: Fortress Academic/Rowman & Littlefield, 2020ISBN 978 1 9787 0660 6 I am delighted to receive my copy of my student Dr Eric Clouston’s revised doctoral thesis, How Ancient Narratives Persuade: Acts in its Literary Context. Scholars have long studied the speeches in Acts as persuasive; Eric looks at how the whole book functions as persuasion, by comparing it with other first-century Jewish writers: Philo, Josephus, the author of Joseph and Aseneth, and the Continue reading →

My slides on improving your academic writing

I led a workshop at Trinity College, Bristol’s postgraduate research conference on improving your academic writing today, drawing on lots I’ve learned over the years of writing myself, and supervising and editing others who write. Here are the slides for those who’d like them. See also my review of How to Fix Your Academic Writing.

An excellent new book on fixing academic writing problems

Inger Mewburn, Katherine Firth and Shaun Lehmann,How to Fix Your Academic Writing Trouble:A Practical Guide London/New York: Open University Press, 2018ISBN 978-0-3352-4332-7xi + 163 pages; £23.99 (paperback) £20.51 (Kindle edition) This outstanding short book will be of immense value to research students and their supervisors. The authors aim to address common issues which PhD students face in writing their thesis, and provide practical advice on how to tackle those issues. All three authors are experienced in advising and helping research students to write at universities in Australia, and their academic expertise ranges across Continue reading →