DWLresearch

Dr William Farrell, Dr Ian Rowlands & Selina Lock Welcome to all our new PhD students and welcome to a new academic year for our existing students. Inductions & Introductions to... The Library Research Services Team will be on hand at the following events for a chat and to answer questions: College Induction Events Friday 9 th Oct - College of Arts, Humanities and Social Science Wednesday 14 th Oct – College of Medicine, Biological Sciences and Psychology Wednesday 21 st Oct – College of Science and Engineering Introduction to... We are also running our own Introduction to... events : Wed 28 th Oct – 11am – Introduction to the Library Wed 28 th Oct -  2pm  – Introduction to Research Data Management Thurs 29 th Oct – 11am – Introduction to Reference Management Thurs 29 th Oct - 2pm – Introduction to the Library Fri 30 th Oct – 11am  – Introduction to Reference Management Fri 30 th Oct  - 2pm  – Introd...

I've currently working through the free ' How to survive your PhD ' course being run by Doctor Inger Mewburn ( thesiswhisperer ) and colleagues via ANU. Pug Imposter 'Pug Love' by DaPuglet Last week the topic of the live chat centered around confidence and impostor syndrome. Here's some tips I picked up from the live chat: How do you know if you're suffering from impostor syndrome or just being self-critical? = When the self critiquing becomes debilitating. It's useful to be critical of your own practices and do some self-reflection, but not to the point that it paralyses you or you lose sight of what you're trying to achieve. Dealing with a PhD thesis can be like dealing with an unruly child! Parents often feel impostor syndrome too. Build your confidence by identifying what’s good about your work. You're not the only one feeling this way - it’s not unusual to struggle with a PhD All academics struggle at one time or another and...

Many of you have been working on the final version of your thesis over the summer and are thinking about submitting. One question we have been asked recently is: what should the text of my thesis look like? What fonts and formatting should be used? The first answer is to check the university's guide to formatting PhD theses . Note the special rules on margins you need to observe. Then check with your department's guidelines and ask your supervisor. There may be subject specific requirements you need to observe.  If you are still not sure, the following are some general principles to follow:   Readability The two most important readers of your thesis are the examiners. They want to concentrate on understanding your arguments and assessing your evidence. They don’t want to be distracted by strange layouts, or frustrated by small fonts .  To help them, choose a serif font like Times New Roman or Georgia . Don’t pick a sans-serif font like Calibri or ...

Image by U.S. Geological Survey https://flic.kr/p/e6vg44 I've enrolled in the free ' How to survive your PhD ' course being run by Doctor Inger Mewburn ( thesiswhisperer ) and colleagues via ANU. The course is open to anyone: PhD students, supervisors, friends and family, support staff etc. I'm hoping by taking part I can get some insight into how to support PhD students better. The main theme of the course is surviving the emotional journey of a research degree. A PhD can feel like a long, hard, often lonely, struggle. It can also be exciting and joyful and stressful and a whole gamut of other feelings along the way! Even if you're not taking part you can see some of the discussion on Twitter via #survivephd15 Here's some of the thoughts and tips I picked up from the first live chat of the course: What if your supervisor doesn't seem invested/interested in you? Find another supervisor who is! Not always an option and changing supervisors c...

As it’s recently had a redesign I thought we would look at Academia.edu this week. Founded in 2008 it provides an online platform for sharing academic research. Academia hosts around 6,484,290 papers and attracts 36 million unique visitors a month.  It’s free to sign up and creating a profile is straightforward . Once you have a profile, you can share as much or as little personal information as you like. Papers can be found in two ways. First, you can follow research interests . Academia then generates a personal news feed that highlights papers tagged with your research interests. Second, you can follow individual academics : every time they upload a paper it appears in your feed.      In my experience, it’s good for three things: Finding and sharing research. Academia has become a depository of research publications, rather like our own LRA . Many researchers use it to host their own publications archive. It’s become a good way to find...