Thesis writing

Academic writing is often understood as a solitary activity, and each PhD is often seen as an individual process – and in many ways it is. However, there are possibilities for research exchange, dialogue and additional learning and networking in what I call social writing.

When I started to run academic writing courses, I thought about writing in terms of individual writing skills, but I began to notice connections between written outputs and collective writing activities. I wondered if writing could be both personal and social and set out to research the role of social processes in the development of writing skills and our ability to deploy these skills. I ran several research projects to explore this idea and published several articles and wove these ideas into my books.

This presentation will draw on this development work and these studies. I will define and illustrate the role of social writing with quotations from interviews with academic writers in professional and academic settings. My aim is to explain the social components of writing and to show how it can help thesis writers address the many challenges of writing – including making time to write – and find meaning, pleasure and satisfaction in their academic writing.