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Today, I'm hosting Dr. Rasheda Weaver, who shares with us what she learned about writing during her PhD. Rasheda L. Weaver, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Community Entrepreneurship at the University of Vermont where she teaches classes and conducts research on social enterprises, businesses that seek to combat social problems. She conducted the first large-scale study of the social, economic, and legal activities on social enterprises in the United States. You can email her at Rasheda.weaver@uvm.edu and follow her on Twitter @RLWeaverPhD. After graduating with a PhD in Public Affairs from Rutgers University in May 2017, I wanted to take some time to reflect, discuss, and share some of the lessons that I learned about writing for peer-reviewed journals throughout my doctoral program. The lessons are organized below by the following three themes: 1) The Writing Process, 2) Organization and Interpretation, and 3) Peer-Reviewed Publications and the Job Search. The Writing Process * ...

Today, I have the pleasure of hosting Dr. Karra Shimabukuro to the "Defenses around the world" series. Dr. Karra Shimabukuro recently defended her dissertation from the University of New Mexico. Her research interests include how issues of class and nationalism function in literature and popular culture, and reflect the fears, anxieties, and desires of a specific historical and cultural moment. Her most recent work exposed the whole cloth creation of Elfego Baca as a New Mexican folk hero for Western Folklore, an examination of the folkloric forest’s impact in Twin Peaks for Cinema Journal: In Focus, Freddy Krueger’s folkloric roots as a bogeyman in Studies in Popular Culture, and the functional aesthetics in the Nightmare on Elm Street series in Style and Form in the Hollywood Slasher Film. I started my coursework at the University of New Mexico in August 2013. I comped in Middle English literature, early modern literature, and folklore and methodology in February 2015. I de...

Today, I am welcoming Olga Degtyareva to the "How I Work" series. Olga is Productivity Mentor for Scientists and president and founder of the Productivity for Scientists Ltd. She helps scientists around the world to overcome overwhelm, become more productive, get in charge of their day while feeling happier in their life. Olga teaches through workshops, lectures, online courses as well as private and group coaching programs. Over the past 7 years she worked with 100's of scientists personally and 1000's benefited from her online lectures and resources. Prior to this Olga has had a successful research career in science, having studied and worked for 15 years in the area of high-pressure physics and crystallography. She is a recipient of an international prize for her high-pressure physics research and an author and co-author of 38 scientific papers. She is also a mother of three children whom she unschools together with her husband. Olga shares her experience on "...

Today, I have the pleasure of inviting Dr Carole Trueman to share the story of her PhD Defense, Dr. Trueman is a recent PhD graduate from Northern Ireland. She has started an educational consultancy business called Clarity Consultancy NI . Carole’s business offers bespoke training, accredited courses, and business / educational research and consultancy services. As well as this, Carole offers advice and support to students on their university assignments and career options. You can find her on Twitter and Facebook I never thought I would be able to say that I enjoyed my PhD defence (or viva as we call it in Northern Ireland). I had been told horror stories, from the viva that lasted six hours, to the student that was so nervous they couldn't say a word! Now, I know these were extreme cases but I didn't hear too many stories that were pleasant. I knew that I was going to have a hard time, my supervisors were openly honest that my thesis was not perfect . As my viva approached ...

Today, Kirsten Coupland is sharing her experiences of the PhD defense with us. Kirsten completed her Bachelor of Science with first class Honours at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. She then worked for a year as a research assistant under Dr. Carol Dobson-Stone at Neuroscience Research Australia investigating the role of copy number variations and miRNAs in frontotemporal dementia. She was fortunate enough to be offered a PhD position in the same lab under the co-supervision of Assoc. Prof. John Kwok to investigate the interaction between lifestyle and epigenetics in non-inherited forms of neurodegenerative disease. She is currently employed as a postdoctoral researcher at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden and am working with Assoc. Prof. Helena Karlström to develop diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for the identification and treatment of a familial form of vascular dementia. When she's not in the lab, she likes to get moving. Stockholm is a beautiful city to e...

In previous posts in this short series of entering motherhood as a research, I described the challenges I faced during my pregnancy. Even though I had a textbook-perfect pregnancy, and quick and painless labor and delivery, I had my share of struggles: I was so tired during my pregnancy, and it took me some effort to accept that I would not be seen lifting heavy barbells while being very pregnant - which had always been what I expected from myself. Just like I had some misconceptions about pregnancy, I did not know what to expect for my maternity leave. I had 12 weeks of maternity leave, and they flew by. The first weeks I spent in my home country, arranging my daughter's paperwork, before returning to Ecuador for the remainder of my leave. My expectation was that, since I wouldn't be that tired anymore, I'd be able to resume workouts right when my gyn/ob gave me the green light. I did not expect that I'd be planning (well, planning is not a good word here, as there was...

This post starts where my previous post about my academic work throughout my pregnancy ends. For your reference, I also wrote a post with some advice related to doing academic work while being pregnant, and here you can read my reply to a reader who worried when would be the right time to have a child if you want an academic career . As I am writing this post, my wonderful little baby is already four months old - and I finally manage to write about the third trimester of my pregnancy. I was planning to write this post towards the end of my pregnancy, and since everybody told me that a first child usually comes past his/her expected date, I thought I still had plenty of time. When I went for my checkup at 39 weeks of pregnancy (on a Thursday), and she was still in breech, the doctor said I would have to go in for a scheduled c-section next Wednesday. He told me to confirm on Sunday, as my husband would be arriving from Ecuador on Saturday. Breech delivery is forbidden for a first chil...

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer , your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands. These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands. If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic! LinkedIn . The website may sound to you like a place for consultants and other folks in the industry. You may consider ResearchGate and your blog as your online venues of choice. Perhaps y ou prefer to interact on Twitter . Maybe you once made a profile on LinkedIn when you were an undergraduate student, and then never updated it. Wherever you are, I'd recommend you to build and maintain a profile on LinkedIn. For academics, LinkedIn can serve the following purposes: 1. Become findab...