FERSA University of Cambridge Blog
Faculty of Education Research Students' Association
Disclaimer: Most of this information will be specifically for PhDs in Education, Psychology, and Mental Health Sciences, as that is our only reference point. How does one begin the process of PhD applications? From trying to decide on the perfect programme to writing research proposals, the process can seem overwhelming, before even starting. During the Summer…
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Welcome to part three of our Multi-Study PhD blog series. This blog is a follow-up from parts one and two where we introduced the concept of multi-study theses and answered several FAQs. In this blog, we spotlight five students who completed their theses at the Faculty in the last three years and used a multi-study…
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This blog is a follow-up from part one where we introduced the concept of multi-study theses, as an exciting and relevant approach to doctoral studies at the Faculty of Education.
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I wasn’t ‘officially’ (whatever that means) diagnosed with the specific learning difficulty of dyslexia until my first year of undergraduate study. The institution screened everyone on admission and to be honest, it wasn’t a big surprise to me when I found out I was. I’d always struggled to spell; my reading speed was bleak, and…
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Doctoral research in Education is an open-ended, unpredictable, and ever-changing process. Now, with COVID-19 disrupting global education for more than a year, that complex (yet highly rewarding!) doctoral journey may have become even more unpredictable… to say the least. Not to worry though. A group of doctoral students at the Faculty of Education (FoE) has…
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In this week’s blog post, PhD students Emily Goodacre, Tanya Paes, and Krishna Kulkarni offer freshers some key PhD advice.
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Three students from the Faculty who recently passed the PhD viva share some of their top tips that can help you to successfully pass it too.
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Even before we all had to start taking measures against the spread of COVID-19, I pretty much worked from home full-time. As much as I enjoy working in various libraries and cafes, it is not always feasible for me given that my research can sometimes require watching films side by side multiple times a day. It’s not really quiet work, involving things like listening to clips of scores as loud as possible to isolate instrumentation. So, I find myself for the most part working from my apartment where I have all the things I need, but sometimes, not a lot of company. Graduate work, whether masters or PhD level research work, can be an intensely isolating process that becomes especially compounded if you work primarily from home. However, after three years of building my little media-infused work bubble, I’ve come up with some things that help me maintain focus, break up the monotony and develop healthy work habits.
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It can be really hard to feel like you are good at anything when doing a PhD, and so when I heard the advice to do something you are good at to keep you sane during the process, I knew mine was drawing. Having used drawing in my role as child psychologist and a conference illustrator, I wanted to use drawing in my research with Colombian children with disabilities. What I hadn’t expected was that drawing would also become central to my own journey through the process. Not only did it help me navigate the ‘should I quit my PhD?’ moment, but it also helped me clarify, and communicate, my research proposal. This blog tells my story before giving some practical steps for building your own creative talents (yes, you have them) and inspiration for how you might illustrate your final thesis.
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In this blog post, Steven Day discusses some of the benefits and pitfalls of doing a doctorate ‘by publication’ instead of writing the classical monograph. He researches the outcomes of graduate sustainability education as a part-timer, and views ‘by publication’ as a chance to make meaningful contributions in a rapidly-emerging topic sooner rather than later.
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