What Next!

Now that the winter school is over, what is next!!

Well hopefully people will get involved in sharing their research or insights into the research process.

We welcome anyone who would like to feature anything on this site to email us and we will be happy to upload it!!

 

Final timetable

The first Postgraduate Winter School takes place in NUI Maynooth this week.  We have four days of practical and engaging sessions lined up from Wednesday to Saturday. Although it will be subject to slight change if necessary, here’s the Winter School Timetable as a PDF.

Most of the sessions will take place in the Rhetoric Annexe building, marked as 12 on the map below.

Thanks to all those who are contributing to this student-led initiative which is supported by the GSI and the Department of Geography, NUIM.

This winter school is about…

Bringing students’ concerns about the process of doing doctoral research to the fore and addressing them is not always easy. Just remembered two interesting pieces that actually do this.
The first is a paper by Michael Buroway, Prof of Sociology at Berkeley, titled “Combat in the dissertation zone”. Although it is for a sociology audience, most students can identify with this piece. The article goes through the super-vision of a PhD, the structure  and touches on several concerns that students have during the process of “dissertating”. The paper can be found here: http://burawoy.berkeley.edu/biography.htm. The second is an article by Karen Kelsky, a former anthroplogy professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Karen addresses one concern – supervision and what students really want from their supervisor( http://chronicle.com/article/To-Professors-Re-Your/129121/).Her blog, http://theprofessorisin.com/about-the-professor/ is equally interesting. This is somebody who professes to have made a career out of providing services that advisors fail to provide their advisees.Both are interesting reads and raise several concerns that students have – about supervision, managing the literature review, structuring the thesis, planning for life after the PhD, career advice, publishing and so on.
Between these two pieces, also lies the essence of what this winter school truly wishes to address – the concerns students have around the  process of a doing a doctoral degree. As I read these pieces, I found myself wondering how many students will end up being academic supervisors, Buroway-style,  or how many will end up advising students from a ringside seat as Karen Kelsky does.

 

Winter School schedule

We’ve put the schedule of the four days on the blog now and we have confirmed most of our session leaders. There’s a conference overview available for download here (pdf). We’ve got a variety of people coming from different backgrounds coming to lead sessions in January and for this, we are delighted. It is encouraging to see the commitment of staff members from the universities and elsewhere for this entirely voluntary effort. Of course, we would like you to register as soon as you can.

Irene, Sandra, Ishwari and Eoin

Postgraduate Winter School 2012

Details of the postgraduate winter school 2012, supported by the Dept of Geography NUIM and the GSI are now available here or by clicking on the link at the top of this page.

Geography Winter School publicity materials

So we have put together some publicity materials for the upcoming geography Winter School, to take place at NUI Maynooth from January 18th to 21st. A more detailed programme will be available in the next while but for now, you can download our brochure and winter school poster as PDF. Feel free to distribute them to the geography students in your university. We’ll be sending paper copies of these around shortly.