From L-R: Aylwen Cotter (President ABSS). Rachel Davis (Vice President ABSS), Kellie Maybery-Reupert (Secretary ABSS) and Laura Steel (Treasurer ABSS)

For many graduate researchers, doing a Masters or PhD is a rollercoaster ride of emotions, wins and losses, sleep deprivation and aiming to be fantastic at time management. However, under the confident surface of most faces is self-doubt, stress and the feeling of being an imposter.

The organising committee for the Agribio Student Society (ABSS) are all very familiar with this and started using their connection to each other as a method of sharing these experiences. I remember asking one of the other committee members ‘how do you know you are doing enough for your PhD?’. I was really stressed that I wasn’t where I should be, or doing all that I should be. She suggested creating a diary – not one to look at week to week as a guide of progress but to look back on over a month. I did this and the diary has helped me with so many other issues such as planning experiments, listing upcoming tasks to ensure I don’t forget them and also as tool to see just how far I have come.

Realising that our committee can’t be the only ones feeling like this, and with the funding support of the Intellectual Climate Fund (ICF), we convened a stress management workshop for our community of researchers.

The goals of the stress management workshop were to create awareness that mental health is very important and provide helpful self-care strategies. We also wanted to provide an opportunity to develop a supportive network of like-minded people who understood these issues, one that was open to anyone and everyone.

Being from an agricultural science background, the ABSS asked for the help of the Strategy Prevention and Education Team here at La Trobe for some guidance on the most relevant information for students for mental health and wellbeing. They provided us with two wonderful speakers, Kellie Muir and Rose Wimbush, whose breadth of knowledge guided us towards areas we could relate to. They were easy to approach for questions, too!

The event was divided into two sections. The first being the workshop and the second being a networking meet-and-greet. The second part was catered by Caffeine, a café in the Agora at La Trobe. The organising committee were blown away by the positive feedback from attendees as they circulated the room, introducing themselves and starting to create that supportive local network of fellow researchers. Many were comfortable talking about their experience, mental health and challenges they have faced. It was refreshing. The ABSS Treasurer, Laura Steel, gave a quick talk about her experiences during her PhD to conclude the event. Laura’s talk helped open up the discussion and made things more relatable to the participants, connecting with the topics discussed by the guest speakers.

Event participants left with a small token from the day in the form of a stress ball or bracelet. These served as reminders that, as researchers, we’re not alone. There is a community of like-minded people out there and we can reach out if we need it. Kellie and Rose sent us links about the support networks available to everyone here at La Trobe University, in case you’d like to know more.

As President of ABSS, it was great to be part of this project. It provided our graduate researchers with a learning and community-building opportunity. As someone who’s doing my PhD and as prone to stress as anyone else, this event really made me see that I need to tailor my PhD to my needs if I’m to get the most out of it. I don’t need to push through all the time. It’s good to take the time to evaluate and decide what will work best for me to get the job done – and that might not be a 9-5 work day!

La Trobe University links from the Stress Management Workshop:

• La Trobe Health, Wellbeing and Inclusion webpage that contains many other resources edu.au/wellbeing
• Direct booking link here Submit an Enquiry | La Trobe University – Symplicity Advocate

Links to a couple of techniques outlined by the speakers during the workshop:

• 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding technique
• Sky as your observing self metaphor

Understanding how feelings and emotions like anxiety can create more anxiety

• The struggle switch

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Aylwen (Wen) Cotter is a PhD candidate at La Trobe University in the Animal, Plants and Soil Sciences department. Her research focusses on early detection of fungal pathogens for agricultural crops.

She is currently the President of the Agribio Student Society (ABSS) and dog crazy. 

You can find Wen on LinkedIn here. 

The post Managing stress and creating community (Wen Cotter) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

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After about 20 years of schooling and tertiary education, making the next BIG step into full-time employment can seem daunting for many graduate researchers!

Recognising this common anxiety among graduate researchers, the PAM HDR student society organised a Careers in Science and networking evening with the aim of helping their peers assess options for their post-graduation life.

One of the main objectives of the night was to showcase how diverse the postdoctoral careers of La Trobe’s College of Science, Health, and Engineering alumni are. We wanted the participants to see just how many different pathways their current studies could take and provide them with some tools to make the transition process from study to employment a little less daunting.

The panellists provided thought-provoking recollections from their postdoctoral experiences and how the important yet scary choices they were forced to make along the way changed their trajectories.

Importantly, the panel also addressed how they had managed to juggle their careers and personal life, and the times when this balance was off. While these panellists each began with different PhD projects, which has resulted in very different career paths, there was a consensus in the advice that they gave to the graduate researcher audience.

The essence of their advice for graduate researchers as they progress into their careers included:

• When you have a task at hand, if you can do it fast, get it done fast.
• Be prepared.
• If you choose to do something, buy into it and be dedicated.
• Don’t be afraid to make decisions that other people may not like.
• Be able to distinguish the personal from the professional.
• Learn when to stop, when you need to delegate, and how to work with the people that you need in order to achieve your goals.
• Think about what you want to do and use all the tools at your disposal to work it out.
• Be respectful and listen to people.
• Have the confidence to back yourself.
• Don’t be too risk averse.

The final thoughts, echoed by all the panellists, were the encouragement to take opportunities as they come (they don’t often come around twice), and if you have a choice to make, follow your heart, but make sure you give yourself a chance to think about it first!

Many thanks to our wonderful all-woman panel for the night! Our guests for the event were:

• Dr Claretta Dsouza, who works for MTP connect, MedTech and Pharma Growth Centre
• Dr Peta Stringer, a forensic scientist for Victoria Police
• Professor Dena Lyras, Deputy Director Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute and lab head, Functional Biology of Bacterial Pathogens, President of Australian Microbiology Society
• Professor Annabelle Duncan previously Vice chancellor at University of New England, currently Chair of the NSW Physical Sciences Fund, Chair of the Australian College of Learned Academies Expert Work group on Rural and Regional Research Excellence and a member of the Board of the Regional Australia Institute
• Professor Marilyn Anderson, Professor of Biochemistry at La Trobe University and Chief Science Officer and Director of Hexima

If you didn’t make it to this event last year, follow the events of the PAM HDR Society to stay in the loop for upcoming events in 2020!

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Jemma Gasperoni, Jordyn Thomas and Keaton Crosse are PhD researchers in the School of Life Sciences, La Trobe University. Their research areas include developmental biology & neuroscience, inflammation in hypertension and kidney disease, and the innate antiviral response, respectively.


When they are not in the lab, they are busy organising activities for the Physiology, Anatomy and Microbiology (PAM) HDR Student Society (Twitter: @PostgradsOfPAM).


Jemma is on Twitter at @JemmaGasperoni, and her lab is @DworkinSeb.
Jordyn is on Twitter at @JordynMThomas, and her lab is @VBIG_lab.
Keaton is on Twitter at @keaton_crosse, and his lab is @HelbigLab.

The post Great advice from a ‘Careers in science’ panel (Jemma Gasperoni, Jordyn Thomas, and Keaton Crosse) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

Photo by Mike Erskine | unsplash.com

During last year, I found myself drawn to attend several workshops run by La Trobe’s Research Education and Development (RED) team. They had topics such as blogging and developing a digital profile. My interests sprang from a desire to get my research and writing on girl internees in Changi during World War II – and my wider interests in the editing and publishing worlds – out into the wider world.

However, kept coming up against an existential blockage: what sort of ‘me’ did I want to be when I’m out there in the digital world? And who did I want to connect with? Who did I want to share my work, words and thoughts with?

Why is being a digital ‘me’ such a complex question?


Who ‘I’ am in the digital world had been a fraught question for me – because ‘I’ contain many selves. Apart from being a (part-time, mature-age) PhD researcher doing a non-traditional style of PhD, I’m also an editor running a freelance business, a published author (for both young people and adult readers) and a family member/friend/local community member.

For a long time, I tried to take the marketing approach of segmenting your audience. That is, I worked to develop a different ‘voice and channel’ tactic to reach out  to different groups of people and organisations. However, most of the time that just lead to a form of textual shutdown. Was I writing to reach out to clients? Or members of the academic world? Young people who might want to read my work? Adults who might want to publish it? This pre-considered thinking made it all too tough to write. I didn’t write or participate anywhere, because I spent so much time being caught in an analysis loop.

What worked for me is when I started to think less about who I wanted to reach, and more about what communities I was a member of and what I had to offer. In other words, I stopped thinking about what the digital world could bring to me, and more about what I could offer the communities that resided in those spaces.


Who do I want to connect with? Who do I want to share my work, words and thoughts with?


My digital communities swirl around each other. I gravitate towards discussions about doing a PhD, writing and publishing, children’s and young adult literature, and editing. Sometimes, these worlds overlap, especially the writing and PhD worlds. The discussions that take place in these spaces revolve around topics such as strategies on getting the work done, balancing research, paid work and family life, upcoming conferences and opportunities, and general support.

Who I am in these communities is an extension of the kind of academic/writer I want to be. This is a mixture of my personality, preferred mode of working and who I am inspired by. I aim to be warm, encouraging, generous with my knowledge and vulnerable. These working traits – while some of them simply are just an extension of who I am IRL – are ones that I’ve carried over from my extensive editing career. Editing and publishing are collaborative work spaces – nothing is produced without the input of an entire team that bring their unique skills to a project. Long-term success as an editor – and especially as a freelancer – is dependent on building good working relationships as well as doing high-quality works. So, it is within the digital academic communities I belong to: the focus is getting the work done and getting it out there while being supported and nurtured as you do it.

I’m a highly text-based person, so I look mostly to Twitter and Facebook for my communities. Other visual- and video-based social media spaces – like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok  – are also useful spaces to browse. Here are some hashtags,  Twitter handles and moderated groups that I’ve found welcoming and useful:

PhD support and conversations about how to get it done

#phdlife
#phdchat
@WriteThatPhD
@PhDForum
@ResearchWhisper
@ThesisWhisperer

Editing and publishing conversations

#amediting
#amwriting
@IPEditors
@EditorsCanada
@The_CIEP

Writing for young people (children’s + young adult literature)

#LoveOzYa
@Ozlaureate
@WritersVic

Academic research in children’s literature

@ACLAR_
@IJBib
@IRSCL_news


So: who am I in the digital space?


I’m a member of overlapping sets of academic and writing communities. I’m a (proto-)academic and writer operating in a thoughtful, yet imperfect, way that offers – and is offered – peer support. I share resources and discoveries, and I’m not afraid to ask my communities for help if I need something. I do this with mostly with text, in digital spaces where my people are gathering. Being ‘me’ online means being a member of communities that support, nurture and foster academic and creative thinking and writing.

In the digital world, I am my outward-facing, flawed, blossoming, writerly self.

Update:


I’m writing this section in early April 2020, where COVID-19 restrictions are coming in to play. In my home state of Victoria, Australia, we are in Stage 3 restrictions. This has important ramifications for everyone, but for PhD researchers, it means the university campus is closed, people are working and studying at home, and all teaching is being done online. Furthermore, other institutions (like archives, libraries, museums) are also physically closed (although many are opening up their digital offerings). It means that for many of us, our research and its methods are dealing with wild and fluctuating changes. What we signed up for may no longer reflect what we are actually able to do.

COVID-19 restrictions also mean that the conditions that we are working under are massively affected. Many people have lost their jobs – and while the government is announcing financial help, this still causes stress and financial pain. Being restricted (mostly) to our homes means our home world is also now our work world; we may be suddenly sharing limited spaces with other members of our households. The adults we live with may also be working from home; our children might not be returning to school for months (which may mean that supervising online learning is coming our way). We may leaning into roles as carers in a way that we are not used to – or be the ones needing care when services are being altered on a daily basis. And, sadly, many of us may face severe illness and heartbreaking situations as this virus takes hold.

All of this has had me thinking a lot about being a PhD researcher in a digital world. Because now – more than ever, even more than when I wrote the original version of this post – we are operating in online spaces. We have been forced, in many ways, to quickly adapt and adopt to working online. We Zoom our university courses, our meetings, our conversations and even our social lives. We use apps to form study groups, writing circles and critique groups. And, despite the individual difficulties, there is also widespread (and in some cases, institutional) acknowledgment that we are all finding it tough.

Personally, I’m finding two useful – maybe even positive – elements are developing out of these conditions. The first is the emotional support that is being poured into digital spaces. We may being physically distancing, but it feels that for many of us, we are socially re-connecting online. The second is the movement towards digitising events. For example, in-person attendance conferences – often held in places far away from my campus – are currently being replaced with online events; making it easier to meet, learn from and collaborate with researchers from a global academic community despite geographical distances.

None of us know how long these restrictions and the resulting challenges will last. While being a PhD researcher in a digital world is certainly challenging, it feels more important than ever that we seek to remain connected. The threads (or should that be ‘optic fibres’?) that connect us are operating in two directions. They give us access to our peers, supervisors and colleagues, providing us with avenues to seek out information and support. In turn, we get to broadcast our empathy to others, express our vulnerability and provide support to others, investigate different modes of working plus communicate the results of our research to the world.

In the middle of this pandemic crisis, there is much to be gained from being a PhD researcher in a digital world. To be honest, for me, the digital world has a lot to do with what is making this time bearable, let alone productive. Here’s hoping that the positive outcomes outweigh the more difficult ones in the times ahead.

The post Being a PhD researcher in a digital world (Carolyn Leslie) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

To embark on a PhD can be a big life decision. To do it remotely may be an even BIGGER one!

More and more, Universities and technology are opening opportunities to learn flexibly and remotely. What does this mean for you as a PhD student?

Can PhD students successfully make progress and complete their study remotely (i.e. be interstate/international/regionally-based from their University)? Can the learning experience be rich and rewarding?

I’m currently a postdoctoral research fellow with the Centre for Research Excellence in Aphasia Recovery and Rehabilitation, La Trobe University, and I say YES to these questions!

But I’d follow up with a proviso that it does depend on your research field and you need to navigate the terrain!

People say PhD research can be isolating in the first place, so why choose to be remote?

As a speech pathologist in Melbourne, I was seeking postgraduate study opportunities to extend upon undergraduate studies and 15 years of clinical practice. By chance, I saw that Professor Emerita Linda Worrall from The University of Queensland (UQ) was seeking PhD students via Twitter! I responded to this and we got talking via Skype (!) about my topic area of interest – psychological wellbeing for people with aphasia. I was soon enrolled, with her as my primary supervisor.

Aphasia is an acquired communication disorder most commonly caused by brain injury after stroke.  Stroke survivors with aphasia can have difficulty talking, understanding others, reading and writing. For many, this sudden loss of communication negatively impacts on their mood, quality of life, relationships, work and previously enjoyed activities. Many stroke survivors don’t get the psychological care they need. The prospect of focusing the next chapter of my life’s work on this area of high and unmet need had me feeling determined and excited to begin!

I was exceptionally fortunate to have Professor
Miranda Rose (La Trobe University) and Dr Brooke Ryan (UQ) join the supervisory
team. My supervisors supported me to seek PhD scholarships, both locally and
remotely. I was successful in gaining an Australian Postgraduate Award (full time scholarship over 3 years) through UQ. And so began my journey as a fledgling, remote UQ PhD student.

There are two sides to the coin of remoteness. It can open up opportunities but it can also feel frustrating at times!

My learnings from this experience are distilled into 3 PhD life hacks:

1) WORK TO STAY AND BE CONNECTED – ‘it takes a village to do a PhD’

I viewed my ‘remoteness’ to be a win-win situation. I established – and still enjoy today – connections with colleagues at UQ and I have close working relationships with my colleagues at La Trobe.

What helped? Getting to know and work with remote and local supervisors, other graduate researchers and clinicians in health networks.

How?

• Plan, schedule and organise study visits to your remote campus and present at conferences local to your University (e.g. Postgraduate Research days/meetings). Think logistics: an office space to work; face-to-face meetings with supervisor/s and other students.
• Maximise your time spent on campus by booking in a workshop or seminar to coincide with your visit (e.g., face-to-face library session on using Endnote).
• Initiate and join in for social activities (e.g. go for coffee/lunch!).
• When home, maximise the use of technology to connect. Use Zoom (or similar) to be a remote attendee on research/student meetings. Attend as many as you can and be consistent in attendance. It helps that colleagues get to know who and where you are, and about your research work and experiences. 
• The same points above can be said for your local supervisor/s and peer group – get out of your solitary study space and keep connected with your local people. I drew upon, and contributed to, the strength, energy and vitality of our local research group. 

2) EMBRACE TECHNOLOGY – ‘use it and talk nicely to your computer’

I consider myself far from being tech savvy! But that’s how my journey began – by joining Twitter and learning from others by following PhD-related handles and hashtags (e.g. @thesiswhisperer @PhD_Connect @PhDForum @PHDcomics #PhDchat).

What helped? Setting up and maintaining my equipment; getting help from IT experts when I needed it; communicating my IT needs and issues with colleagues at my remote campus.

How?

• Consider what helps you to access and get the most out of remote attendance via videoconference/Zoom/Skype. Be assertive so people at your University understand the challenges and can help you resolve them. 
• In my case, I wrote up a guideline on ‘Skype etiquette’ for our research meetings and presented this to the group. For example, it was important to have the webcam showing others in the room or the presenter, rather than pointing up to show the ceiling! There was a commitment from those on campus to help put the etiquette into practice.  
• Keep in touch with IT services via email/phone for help (e.g. setting up Virtual Pathway Network (VPN) to access shared computer hard drives, etc).
• Attend professional development seminars or workshops via videoconference. If something doesn’t seem accessible remotely, ASK if it is and KEEP ASKING. If Universities offer remote enrolment, they need to work hard to make these events accessible.
• Back up your work, back up your work and then back up your work again – my computer hard drive died twice during my PhD. Fortunately, work was backed up in multiple places (clouds, portable hard drives, etc). Did I mention to back up your work?

3) WORK-LIFE BALANCE DOESN’T ALWAYS EXIST – ‘there will be ebbs and flows’

At times, it’s ok not to feel ok during your PhD. There will be highs and lows.

You can be strategic, plan, work hard, but life goes on and sometimes things happen beyond your control. The important thing is to get help and support.

How?

• Some people say ‘work-life balance’ doesn’t always exist and I tend to agree. There will be times of hard work and pressure to get work done, and there will be times of relative ease. Aiming for a ‘balance’ tends to make me feel unnecessarily pressured in itself! 
• Try to keep to a routine and have boundaries around your work.
• Try to maintain a steady flow of self-care – this will only enhance your productivity and creativity ( e.g. do stuff you enjoy and look after you!). Don’t be backwards in coming forward for help!

So, YES, it can be done, you can complete a PhD remotely.

BUT to enhance your learning and get it done, you need to be: connected, supported and embracing of the tech. It’s one step at a time to navigate the terrain until, one day, down the track … you are proudly holding your awarded PhD.

Photo courtesy of Caroline Baker

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Caroline Baker is a speech pathologist and postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Research Excellence in Aphasia Recovery and Rehabilitation (@aphasiaCRE). 

Caroline was awarded a PhD in speech pathology from The University of Queensland and holds a Bachelor of Science with major in Psychology from Monash University. Her PhD studies combined her interests to investigate the translation of stepped psychological care for people with aphasia after stroke. She is based at La Trobe University and works across two research programs of the Aphasia CRE: ‘Optimising mental health and wellbeing’ and ‘Treatment effectiveness.’ Caroline also holds clinical and honorary research positions at Monash Health.  


She tweets from @CarolineJM26.

The post 3 PhD life hacks for the remote researcher (Caroline Baker) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

(Left to right): Emmy Frost (Archaeology), Anna Henger (History), Karen Strojek (Politics), Esther Manu-Barfo (Linguistics), Nicola Linton (Classics and Ancient History), Nicole Pavich (Media Arts & Screen Studies), Paul Northam (Visual Arts), and Justin See (Social Inquiry – Planning). Photo by Greg Muller.

I’ve written before about broadening my research community across disciplinary boundaries, by taking part in conference organisation in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HUSS).

Attending and working at university conferences is a great way to meet other graduate researchers and find points of commonality, but it’s not the only way!

Many Schools, and the Departments within them, have graduate student representatives who work with their department heads and graduate research coordinators to improve communications, and the intellectual climate in general, at a local level.

In my roles as a representative for my Department (Politics, Media and Philosophy) and my School (HUSS), I attend regular meetings with other School representatives – all graduate researchers – from the Colleges of ASSC and SHE.

A lot of our discussion is about university policy, infrastructure and facilities, supervision relationships, student wellbeing, and how we might work to improve social and professional networks between graduate researchers.

We come from many disciplines but we share common concerns and practical advice and, sometimes, we discover remarkable links between separate graduate research projects. For example, Susanna Bryceson’s biological science work on fire ecology and the ancient grasses of Gondwanaland (in the College of SHE), overlaps with Jane Urquhart’s anthropological work on fire ecology and Indigenous burning practices (in the College of ASSC).

None of us doubt the value of digital communications between people separated by physical distance. Zoom video-conferencing technology connects us to our fellow representatives on other campuses.

But still…we are here and they are there. Does it matter? We’ve all heard conversations about how hard it can be to attract university students to campus and convince them to keep them coming. We’d like them here in shared time and space, to build productive, sustaining relationships with their lecturers, tutors and peers. Walking on the same ground, seeing the same sights, breathing in the same smells – sharing physical experiences leads to shared memories and (especially if the memories are good) can build stronger relationships.

Our HUSS peers in Bendigo do come here to Bundoora once in a while. To make the relationship fairer, we should go to them sometimes, to walk on their grounds and share the same air.

With the value of face-to-face interactions in mind, my fellow HUSS representatives and I negotiated some funding to take six Bundoora graduate reps to the Bendigo campus for our May monthly meeting.We currently have two representatives in Bendigo: Justin See (Social Inquiry – Planning) and Paul Northam (Visual Arts). After a very productive meeting, we enjoyed a chatty, sociable lunch together, followed by a walking-tour of the Bendigo campus, with Justin and Paul acting as our hosts and guides.

Justin, Paul, and Leonard French | Photo courtesy of Karen Strojek

The campus offers some facilities and attractions that Bundoora doesn’t have. While both have beautiful outdoor spaces, trees, abundant native bird life and the occasional hopping marsupial, our peers in Bendigo are sited on a hilltop, where the outlook is more extended and the Autumn air can be very crisp.

The library there doesn’t just have a lot of books, which HUSS students love. The library walls are crowded with Leonard French artworks. The Education building doubles up as a gallery area for the FM Courtis collection: more than 350 works by notable Australian artists, including John Olsen, Fred Williams and Sydney Nolan. There are surprises waiting around every corner…

The Outdoor Education Centre boasts a sheltered outdoor climbing wall – and our efforts there got everyone laughing (in a good way). We also had a chance to visit the Anthrozoology Research Group DogLab, where guide dogs are trained to aid PTSD sufferers and visitors are welcome.

Finally, Paul gave us a tour of the Visual Arts studios: warm, well-lit spaces for tomorrow’s artists.

None of us will forget this day. The long drive home had us all reflecting on what we’d learned. Sharing experiences with your peers at other campuses is a great way to expand your research community and strengthen your social and professional ties, across geographical locations as well as across disciplines.

If you have an opportunity to meet your peers at another campus, don’t turn it down!

Karen and Anna – on the road to Bendigo | Photo courtesy of Karen Strojek

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Karen Strojek is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy at La Trobe University. 

Her doctoral research is on the abolition of inheritance taxes in Australia, with a particular focus on gendered patterns of property ownership, political activism, and the changing nature of Australian federalism. 

Karen completed a Bachelor of Arts, with majors in Sociology and Politics, at Griffith University in 2014 and Honours in Politics at La Trobe University in 2015. 

She has extensive experience in the clothing and textile trades and ran a bespoke clothing company from 1999 to 2013. Karen has also tutored in industrial methods in the Fashion Design school at RMIT. She tweets from @KarenStrojek.

The post Extending your inter-campus research community (Karen Strojek) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

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Photo by Fabian Gieske | unsplash.com

In recent years, career development researchers have focused on the role of chance and luck in career development. They’ve found that, although on reflection we have a tendency to ‘reframe’ our career success in terms of luck, there are certain behaviours and attitudes that contribute to taking advantage of ‘chance’ events. Dr Rachel Loney-Howes a Lecturer from the School of Health and Society here at UOW was ‘lucky’ enough to start an ongoing academic position 6 months after her PhD (yes – 6 months!) In this blog post, she talks about one of the behaviours that helped make that happen.

I still can’t believe my luck. Six months after graduating from my PhD from La Trobe University in Melbourne, I was offered an ongoing position at the University of Wollongong as lecturer in Criminology in the School of Health and Society. Six months.

I was under the impression that I would be casually or contractually employed for at least three – maybe even five years – before I would be gainfully employed, as so many of my friends and colleagues were and currently are. At an HDR Panel for postgraduate research students in the School of Health and Society, which ran in October 2018, I was asked to speak about how I got so lucky. What was it about my experience as a post-graduate research student that made me a competitive candidate for my current role? And what pearls of wisdom could I share with emerging ECRs that might help them as they enter the academic job market. In this blogpost, I discuss some elements of that “luck” I encountered during my candidature as a PhD student – most of which came about because I literally “showed up.”(Note 1);(Note 2)

I learned about “showing up” in the first year of my PhD – advice from a mentor who was not a supervisor. “Showing up” is the informal part of your PhD training whether you are interested in an academic career or not; it not only helps you with networking, but also demonstrates your ability to be a team player – something highly valued by all workplaces. There are three key ways I believe “showing up” helped mould me into an employable ECR. These might seem trivial or self-evident, but I assure you they are vital if you want to succeed in being employed upon graduation – and you must do them regularly and with sincerity.

The first act of showing up for me was quite simple – at least in theory. It meant going into the office most week days, using the workspace I had been allocated (I was lucky enough to have one), and getting to know my officemates, fellow post-graduate students and staff in the department (including the administration staff). This also involved being seen in the tearoom, and attending post-graduate workshops/meetings, as well as student and staff gatherings. Not only did people learn my name and what my research interests were, but this also led to teaching opportunities and research assistant work. It also meant I learned what other people were working on and had amazing critical discussions over lunch, coffee and beers during my candidature. It also helped me to make friends, which is so important given the isolating nature of PhD research.

“Showing up” for morning tea led to the second act of showing up, which is a little more daunting. It involves leaving your building and going to meet other post-graduate students and staff members in different faculties in formal and informal contexts. I was fortunate enough to be selected as a committee member on a number of different projects through attending university-wide events for post-graduate students, and participated in competitions like the “three minute thesis” through which I met different staff and students from across La Trobe University. This also provided me with a wider support network beyond my department and people recommending me for more governance-related projects.

The third act of showing up takes you beyond the confines of your university setting to conferences, workshops and seminars – either attended by academics or people working in your industry or sector. And you should present at one conference a year at a minimum. If you can, volunteer your time to be part of the organising committee, show up at “post-graduate” days now a staple of most conferences in Australia as you will inevitably meet post-graduate students with whom you can collaborate (or commiserate!) with, and attend the conference/workshop dinners. I attended many of these alone during my PhD candidature, and as a result became close friends with a number of other PhD students – some of whom have also obtained secure academic employment incredibly quickly after completing their PhDs. Having networks beyond La Trobe also proved fruitful in securing casual and contract work once I completed my PhD and was looking for permanent work.

“Showing up” in all these spheres took a lot of time and effort. However, it was a vital part of becoming a scholar.

So, yes, on the one hand, I did get lucky with this job. I was in the right place at the right time, with a Head of School prepared to take a chance on someone who was not yet established, and I was willing to move (you must be prepared to move). However, on the other hand, I worked hard at not only writing a PhD (soon-to-be-book) that was well researched, methodologically rich and topical, but worked on showing up.

I made sure people knew who I was but not in a way that was vested in self-importance (at least I hope not!), but rather in a way that was based on respect, reciprocity, and a commitment to seeing myself as part of the department and the academic community. I did not want to be a PhD student who only surfaced every six months to report on their progress.

I “showed up” in different ways, almost every day for three and a half years – and this has paid off in dividends.

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(Note 1) I should note here that my “advice” on showing up stems from a privileged position in which I undertook my PhD with minimal responsibilities outside of my research and teaching commitments – I had no children to look after, was on an Australian Post-Graduate Award for 3.5 years, and had a partner in full-time employment who was able to support me financially. I also lived in close proximity to the university, so I did not have to travel far to campus. I therefore fully acknowledge that this made “showing up” much easier for me than other people. I also had two wonderful supervisors who encouraged me to attend workshops, introduced me to people at conferences, and supported me emotionally throughout my candidature. For this, I am eternally grateful.

(Note 2) Because of the challenges associated with juggling family responsibilities with study or being far away, another possibility is “showing up” and connecting through social media. For example, on Monday afternoons I used to attend a virtual “shut up and write” session through Twitter. You can also attend webinars, and follow and retweet conference hashtags if you can’t be present. I also strongly recommend tapping into the broader postgraduate community in Australia via weblogs, such as The Thesis Whisperer, where you realise that everyone is just making it up as they go along.

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Dr Rachel Loney-Howes is a Lecturer in Criminology in the School of Health and Society at the University of Wollongong, Australia. 


A critical socio-legal studies scholar, her research explores the nature, history and scope of anti-rape activism, with a particular focus on the relationship between activism, support services and law reform. Her book, co-edited with Dr Bianca Fileborn (University of Melbourne), titled #MeToo and the Politics of Social Change was released in May 2019.


Rachel tweets from @rloneyhowes.

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We share a lab identity. We are connected. But how well do we actually know our lab colleagues outside of the work sphere? What are their interests? Who are their partners? How much have their kids grown since they last popped in for a visit after a childcare pick up?

In the Hulett and Poon labs, where I’ve been fortunate to work as a postdoc for many years, we make it a point to take time out at the year’s end to reflect and celebrate our collective successes (from grants, conferences, awards, publications to student completions). This could be over lunch (that could span much of the afternoon), a day trip to the zoo (we’ve visited all Victorian attractions by now), or a picnic after a memorable ride on Puffing Billy.

Members of the Hulett and Poon labs. Photo courtesy of Fung Lay.

In 2015, we had an offer by a PhD student who had completed Honours in the lab the year prior (Georgia Atkin-Smith, now a successful postdoc in the lab) to host a camp-out at her family home in Quantong. This started a new tradition of the “lab weekend retreat”. The initial motivation, which still holds true today, was simple: Let’s have fun and get to know each other better.

What are the machinations of pulling something like this off?

It takes research (e.g. where do we go, how much it will cost each person), planning (e.g. what are the sleeping arrangements, what will we do when we get there) and execution (e.g. drivers, shoppers, cooks). Fortunately, these are skills that our group have in spades.

A couple of members will take the lead and do the scouting for the idyllic venue, using those much-practised skills of research by internet. Once decided, the budget for accommodation and food is set (very reasonable for a weekend away and covered by member themselves), and designated shoppers are tasked to do the big shop for the weekend ahead. Topping the shopping list is ensuring there’s enough bacon and eggs to cover our breakfasts!

On the Friday of the adventure, most of us invariably gather at work. Downing the pipettes early, we’d proceed to pack the cars with luggage, food and people, before making our way to retreat central for a weekend of R&R and team bonding.

Assignment of duties on-site are generally self-appointed. For myself, I gravitate to the BBQ (where I once put on a spectacular fat-fire show for the team) and cooking the mountains of eggs for breakfasts.

The only agenda for the weekend is to mentally unwind, relax and enjoy just being in the moment.

So, who actually comes to these retreats? The answer is simple – the ‘lab family’. This includes lab heads, postdocs, research assistants, graduate researchers and honours students, as well as undergraduate students who volunteer in the lab. Importantly, partners and immediate families are invited, as are lab alumni. Such is the culture of the Hulett and Poon labs that ‘once a member of the lab, always a member of the lab family’.

Lab residential retreats – 2015-2018. Image courtesy of Fung Lay.

We’ve been running these retreats for the last four years. Our destinations have included a camping experience, complete with bonfire and marshmallows, at the Atkin-Smith family home (2015), to stays in large single dwellings in Rosebud (2016) and Eildon (2017), to a quaint a set of cottages in Deans Marsh in December 2018.


Such excursions from the norm certainly enrich and support a more holistic side to the whole research team endeavour. The ability to share laughs over beverages and well-cooked home meals with the chance to connect at a more personal and social level, beyond that which may exist at the workplace, are invaluable. The positive flow-on effects for team cohesion, relatability and morale become evident.

For finishing Honours (especially those continuing to PhD) and new members, it reinforces that the lab culture is strong and that support will be there for them in the years ahead. The partners and children also get to know where and with whom their loved ones spend much of their days.


Research is not a short-term pursuit so enjoying where you work, with the people you work with, is key to success and positive outcomes.

So, could you and your group benefit from a retreat (over a day or weekend) to mentally disconnect from the hustle and bustle so that you can recharge and reconnect? It may be the spark that sets your research alight!

Photo courtesy of Fung Lay.

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Dr Fung Lay is a lecturer and research supervisor in the Master of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics course and an honorary research fellow in the Hulett lab in the Department of Biochemistry and Genetics at La Trobe University. 


He has had 26 years of continued association with La Trobe University, gaining BSc(Honours) and PhD (molecular biology and protein biochemistry) degrees and extended postdoctoral research years in the laboratories of Professor Marilyn Anderson and Dr Mark Hulett.


In addition to research and teaching, Fung enjoys sports. He is an honorary life member of the La Trobe University Taekwondo Club and an avid dragon boater with the Chinese Youth Society of Melbourne.

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“Not only is it important to ask questions and find the answers, as a scientist I felt obligated to communicate with the world what we were learning.” ― Stephen Hawking

As a PhD researcher, you’re often focused on a very niche research area with loads of technical jargon, complex ideas and concepts that can be difficult to communicate to researchers from different fields.

Why is it important to be able to communicate your research?

While your main focus as a graduate researcher might be to write your thesis, you need to be able to communicate effectively in writing and orally for a range of audiences (academic journals, media, industry and the community).

The idea of translating our academic interests into simpler, more engaging words can seem daunting, but it all helps share our work, widen the range of potential collaborations, and create new opportunities.

In research, the ability to succinctly convey your ideas to other researchers and to the public is one of the most important skills you can gain, yet the opportunities to build these skills are often scarce.

That’s why, at the end of 2017, a group of graduate researchers (including me) founded the Physiology, Anatomy and Microbiology (PAM) HDR Student Society with the aim of nurturing social relationships, promote networking and provide platforms to enhance educational experiences, and therefore promote positive outcomes for individuals within the department.

Since then, we have held professional development events as well as networking and social activities for the PhD researchers in the department, which has really helped shape our local intellectual climate.

When I heard about the Graduate Research School’s Intellectual Climate Fund (ICF), it seemed like a great opportunity to further build this momentum, particularly between graduate researchers and academic staff. Our committee got together and came up with the idea of organising a ‘Showcase Symposium’, where all of our department’s PhD researchers would present their work to staff, students, collaborators and other interested parties within the research community.

This is an event we had been wanting to organise for some time, given our department is quite large in size and diverse in its scientific disciplines. We thought it would be the perfect opportunity to practice these skills of communicating our research to peers in a conference-style day. We hoped it would allow PhD researchers to gain fundamental skills, particularly in public speaking and networking in order to foster collaboration and peer support.

We planned the day as a series of 10-minute talks, 3-minute talks and scientific posters, as these are common presentation formats at the conferences we’d be attending. Students submitted abstracts to be considered for these talks and were chosen based on scientific merit. On the day, we ended up having 25 oral presentations and 34 poster presentations, which was fantastic!

Break time! Panoramic shot of the conference venue, the John Scott Meeting House Chamber, lined with posters, and participants buzzing after some great talks. Photo by Ella Johnston (on Twitter).

This environment allowed new PhD researchers, or those wanting to further develop their skills, to do so in a comfortable environment surrounded by supportive and understanding peers. This event helped graduate researchers build their confidence, which we hope will better prepare them for presenting at the larger, more confronting national and international conferences.

I was delighted to hear that the attendees of the symposium, both students and departmental staff, greatly enjoyed the day and felt that it achieved its intended aims.  Hopefully, we will have the opportunity to run this event every year to continue fostering an exemplary research culture within our department.

This symposium allowed me to reflect on the ‘bigger picture’ of my research and how I could gain interest from multiple disciplines. It would be naïve to assume that everyone is equally intrigued by your research. However, the skills we gain from being able to interest people outside our field are invaluable ones that will stand us in good stead in our careers.

These skills become especially important when communicating our research to a broader, non-academic audience (e.g. newspaper articles, TV shows and radio broadcasting). The majority of the general public, though potentially interested in our topics, will not understand the complex language of academia. Being able to simplify the ‘bigger picture’ and relay our research using lay terminology invites interest and collaboration not only from people within academia and research organisations, but also from those in the wider community.

If you are able to effectively communicate the key ideas of your research, they will be the keys that unlock endless opportunities.

If you would like to see more of the action from this event, check out the hashtag #PAMHDRSymp18 on Twitter.

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Ebony Monson is a PhD student in the School of Life Sciences, La Trobe University. Her research focuses on looking for novel mechanisms that drive an immune response to viral infections, with the hope that teasing apart the complexity of an effective immune response will allow the creation of novel anti-viral treatments to combat in-curable viral infections.

When Ebony is not in the lab, she is busy helping organise different activities for the department as part of the Physiology, Anatomy and Microbiology (PAM) HDR student Society and La Trobe Microbiology Society. 

She is on Twitter at @ebony_monson, and her lab is @HelbigLab.

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The one conference that those working in Graduate Research Schools tend to think of as an essential one is the Quality in Postgraduate Research (QPR) event.

It’s held in Adelaide every two years, and it’s THE conference for those working with graduate researchers and higher degree candidates more broadly.

Why?

The whole program – all two and half days of it – is devoted to presentations, roundtables, and forums about graduate research experiences, processes, environments, and supervisors. The talks range from major research project findings that aim to influence policy around graduate research, to sharing local processes and pilot programs from particular contexts.

Our keynote speakers came from the United Kingdom, South Africa, and locally. The opening keynote was given by Australia’s Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, and reflected on the qualities
of the twenty-first century scientist, and the opportunities of a new generation.

And we were there at QPR! Very there, actually!

La Trobe’s RED team presented across four sessions, on the topics briefly outlined below:

Dan Bendrups talked about the findings of an empirical, ethnographic study of the impact of doctoral education on professional creative arts practice. His work discusses the motives for undertaking doctoral study, and will provide a basis for considering how this study translates into the pragmatic realities of professional work in the arts sector.

The work draws particularly on the experiences of candidates who were already established creative and performing artists before commencing doctoral study, it will describe the impact (or lack thereof) of the doctorate on their professional practice.

Tweet by University of Melbourne Library’s Jennifer Warburton about Tseen’s talk.

Tseen Khoo (me!) talked about the ways that the RED team undertakes the complex task of developing our researchers’ social media literacy and the inherent challenges of these programs.

It focuses particularly on how the process of developing an effective, professional set of social media skills for researchers often requires a strong understanding of academic contexts, clarity of an individual’s purpose and identity in the space, and articulated support pathways to grow this expertise within the time-frame of the candidature.

Jeanette Fyffe presented across two sessions. The first, with another La Trobe scholar Margaret Robertson (Education), reported on a case study of a department in a large Australian university that has an ethos of shared responsibility for doctoral supervision focussed around an annual supervisor “Away Day”. The paper described the features that sustain the department in its approach to developing doctoral researchers and supporting colleagues in their supervisory practice.

The second session was a forum, led by Jeanette, that was dedicated to discussing some of the findings from the major national project “Reframing the PhD for Australia’s future universities” (Barrie, Peseta, Fyffe, Mantai, and Kiley). For this session, the focus on the concept that a doctoral curriculum might be conceived as four intentionally designed learning spaces (that is, the research project, supervision, intellectual climate, and courses/workshops), and how candidature milestones might also be conceived as a curriculum proxy. For all the information about this project, check out their website: Reframing the PhD.

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Dr Tseen Khoo is a lecturer in research education and development with the RED team at La Trobe University. Melbourne. 


She has held research-only fellowships at the University of Queensland and Monash University, and was a research grant developer at RMIT University.


Tseen created and manages the Research Whisperer with Jonathan O’Donnell. 


She’s on Twitter at @tseenster.

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Photo by Mavis CW | unsplash.com

Recently, Erin Bartram’s piece ‘The Sublimated Grief of the Left Behind’ made waves on Twitter for its honest and frankly, painful assessment of the experience of leaving academia, after the author failed to secure a tenured position.

As Australian PhD students, we discover early in our candidature that our 3.5-year program likely won’t be competitive in the global market.

For many of us, our further study is born out of a genuine passion for learning, and accompanied by naive aspirations towards an academic career. In most cases, 3.5 years of modest funding isn’t adequate to write a thesis; publish a monograph with a leading academic publisher plus multiple peer-reviewed, tier-one journal articles; present at international conferences; attract research funding; and coordinate and design undergraduate subjects. Let’s not even mention the expectations of attaining a myriad of impressive awards and bursaries.

Given the heavily-skewed ‘jobs available vs. PhD graduates’ ratio in history, it is no surprise really that the few available positions often go to those who earned their doctorates from leading R1 institutions (or equivalent) internationally. All this is happening in the context of an increasingly casualised academic workforce. About 65% of Australian university staff are now employed casually, and the vast majority of the research labour listed above must be done without job security.

This, Bartram’s piece, and the many other varieties of ‘quit lit’ that grace our Twitter feeds daily, as well as the experience of departmental restructures, and the loss of supervisors to illness, redundancy and retirement, can make for fairly low morale among doctoral students. At more than one point, it can feel overwhelming. We won’t pretend we’ve found a way to halt this compounding sense of futility. Even if we did, it would likely vary for everyone as the PhD journey is such a personal one.

What we have found, though, is the surprising morale-boosting benefits of the humble reading group.

For the past three years a group of historians and historiographers in-training here at La Trobe have met weekly for a two-hour reading group. The official rationale is to expand our understanding of the history and structure of our discipline. The unofficial positive outcomes, however, have been countless.

In general, the typical academic reading group can be stale, awkward and often pretentious.

The usual format is for a chair to set a reading in advance, and for group members to come prepared to discuss its salient points during the meeting. Often this can lead to a certain rigidity of thought and interaction, whereby group members stick to their pre-formulated points. At worst, it can descend into the kind of posturing that we all know too well, whereby genuine thinking-together is derailed by the worst kind of adversarial, sparring matches concerning obscure points of interest to no-one.

What’s productive about our group is the method we employ. We use a read-aloud, think-aloud methodology where we take turns to read the text aloud, and pause regularly to discuss and clarify crucial points. Usually one person will have read the piece in advance in order to help mediate the discussion, but everyone else will be encountering it for the first time. This makes for a genuine intellectual and personal experience whereby thinking happens in the moment and with others. This approach has proven to be remarkably well-suited to different kinds of learners, and swiftly eradicates any of the aforementioned posturing.

There is a degree of vulnerability and a slowness that comes with reading out loud, both for the audience and for the individual reader, but also in the tentative character of thought that is produced when working through complex ideas together. This is a welcome relief from the break-necked pace of PhD life where we are expected to read and understand vast amounts of material as quickly as possible. It is also conducive to creating lasting friendships and genuine collegiality among PhD researchers who so often occupy a liminal space within academic departments, and where competition and precarity can create tense working environments.

Our group of participants grew organically from among the History department. Informal discussions over lunch led to a general consensus that our shared interest was worth exploring. The read-aloud method was inspired by a philosophy group at Melbourne University whose convenors read key segments aloud. This aligned with Matilda’s own research interests in theories of learning and university pedagogy.** The founding group members agreed upon the first readings and later, readings were decided upon among the wider group. We would recommend having at least one person whose knowledge of the field, whatever it may be, can lead the initial reading selection. Once underway however, everyone involved brought knowledge and expertise to the process of selection and interpretation.

From there, when new members showed interest in joining, we were very transparent about our approach and its benefits. We tried first and foremost to cultivate a shared investment in the methodology, which in retrospect is the core of our identity and mandate as a group, rather than the subject matter, though they are mutually conducive.

Although the method of the group is perhaps more important than the subject matter, focusing on the structures of our discipline has increased our confidence as historians and historiographers, and broadened our knowledge beyond a narrow field of inquiry. This is vital in an absurdly competitive job market, where specialised research expertise, as well as breadth, are key demands.

Most importantly, though, the reading group has become a vital and sustaining source of camaraderie during the many ‘tough times’ a PhD can throw up (sometimes referred to as the Valley of Shit on the Thesis Whisperer blog).

By creating a recurring space of collaboration beyond a visit to the cafe or pub, we’ve been able to forge an enduring sense of disciplinary and collegial identity via the thrill of engaging genuinely and collaboratively with a piece of writing.

This has been a highlight of our degrees so far and one we would recommend to fellow graduate research students.

** Indicative references for these include:

• Women’s Ways of Knowing. Belenky et al.
• The Power of Mindful Learning. EJ Langer
• Examsmanship and the Liberal Arts. WG Perry
• Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years. WG Perry
• New Students New Learning Styles. C Shroeder
• Pedagogy of the Distressed. J Tompkins
• Clinchy BM, ‘Issues of gender in teaching and learning’, Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, Vol. 1, 1990, pp. 52-67.

Acknowledgements: Many thanks to all the members of the Theory and Philosophy of History Reading Group at La Trobe University.

This post is co-published today with The Research Whisperer blog. 

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Matilda Keynes is a PhD candidate in in the department of History and Archaeology at La Trobe, and lecturer-in-charge at the Australian Catholic University, where she coordinates the subject ‘Education in History’. 

Her doctoral research explores the educational implications of retrospective politics since the 1980s, focusing on history education in Australia. 

In 2018, Matilda is an Endeavour Postgraduate Research Scholar hosted at Umeå University in Sweden where she is undertaking a comparative study of Swedish-Australian uses of history in processes of transitional justice.

She tweets @matildakeynes.

Nikita Vanderbyl is a PhD candidate in the department of History and Archaeology at La Trobe. 

Her research in Aboriginal Australian history and art history focuses on Wurundjeri artist William Barak and the trans-imperial circulation of Aboriginal material culture during the nineteenth century. 

Nikita’s work has been published in Aboriginal History and The Conversation.

She tweets @nikitavanderbyl.

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