thesis whisperer twitter

Thesiswhisperer

I do research on research and think about stuff

Final PostAc report on demand for researchers in industry

‎On the reg on Apple Podcasts

So, you're finishing your PhD in uncertain times. What's next?

Academic gossip and artisanal bullshit

Influencing people with your research - online version

Writing under pressure: strategies when you are long on time and short on ambition

Building a second brain for writing - 2023

‎Thesiswhisperer Pod: Episode two: Half Loop on Apple Podcasts

‎Thesiswhisperer Pod: Episode one: The good news about Hell on Apple Podcasts

The enshittification of academic social media

Be Visible Or Vanish: Engage, Influence and Ensure Your Research Has Impact

How to get to inbox zero and other stories - On the reg

Zombie projects and the ‘forever homework’ of academic life

Thesiswhisperer (@[email protected])

Podsocs - podcasts for social workers

The thesis whisperer:.

In conversation with Inger Mewburn

Are you a PhD student? Thinking of writing a blog? Or just like or want to improve your writing? This is the podcast for you! @#% Mild Course Language

Inger Mewburn is a researcher, specialising in research education since 2006. Prior to this she lectured in architecture and worked in architecture offices for around a decade. She is currently the Director of Research Training at The Australian National University where she is responsible for co-ordinating, communicating and measuring all the centrally run research training activities and doing research on student experience to inform practice. Aside from editing and contributing to The Thesis Whisperer, Inger writes scholarly papers, books and book chapters about research student experiences. She is a regular guest speaker at other universities and does occasional media interviews.

Recommended citation – APA6th

Fronek, P. (Host). (2013, August 30). The Thesis Whisperer: In conversation with Inger Mewburn [Episode 56]. Podsocs . Podcast retrieved Month Day, Year, from http://www.podsocs.com/podcast/the-thesis-whisperer/ .

• Related Podcasts
• Writing for publication

http://thesiswhisperer.com/

16 episodes

The podcast feed for Thesiswhisperer.com: tune in for audio projects produced by Professor Inger Mewburn from The Australian National University. Scroll down in the feed for past projects, including 'Academics Talk about The Chair' and 'Your brain on Writing'... Coming soon: 'Academic workers talk about Severance'

Thesiswhisperer Pod Thesis Whisperer

• Society & Culture
• 21 OCT 2023

Episode Nine: The We, we are

It's the final episode of Severance, and it's really fucking tense! For our final show this season, it's just us: Outie Anitra and Innie Inger, talking about episode 9. So much happened this episode! So many big reveals, and new plot lines opened. Helly has the most Dystopian Cinderella moment, Mark is Ricken's fanboy, Dylan is taking one for the workers collective and Irv only says a single word (but he makes it count). We still live in hope for season two - hopefully we won't be i...

• 16 SEPT 2023

Episode Eight: What's for dinner?

Worker solidarity is the theme of this episode, and in celebration, we invited Anitra's current boss, Geoff Stringer. Don't worry though - he's not going to rat us out to the higher ups.The team dissect episode: What's for Dinner. This is the episode where Inger had to text Anitra all the way through because it was so damn tense. Plans are made, dreams are broken - most importantly, certain people are at the 'find out' stage of the Fuck Around journey. And we are here for every delicious mome...

Episode Seven: Defiant Jazz

You'll never look at mandated company fun the same way after this episode, especially when it becomes clear that inter-departmental politics can get its own body count. Prof Narelle Lemon, who is now at Edith Cowan University, joins us again to dissect episode seven of Severance. There's so much in this episode - the action is really heating up. Milcheck tries his best to keep a lid on the simmering tensions, and only earns himself a bite from Dylan. There is no Ricken in this episode, b...

• 2 SEPT 2023

Episode Five: The grim barbarity of optics and design

We saved this one for Anitra's co-worker and Director of Digital Experience, Joyce Seitzinger, because it is the infamous "bring-your-baby-goat-to-work" day episode. There is also a lot of Ricken in this ep, which gives us an excuse to talk about our favourite academic. Anitra compares Ricken to Yoda while Joyce points out that the comparison works only if Yoda were really really self-involved. Plus, mysterious baby goats.Our office door is always open so please leave your comments in th...

Episode Six: Hide and Seek

Love is in the air in episode six of Severance, where inter-departmental politics is platonic. Sort of. Maybe. Bert and Irv grow closer, Mark and Helly take the work flirt to the next level and Devon has a mysterious encounter in the local park... Anitra's work colleague and future novel co-writer Chris joins us this week to dissect the many Kier mystery kinda-reveals. He also gives us a word to describe that spooky feeling of buildings that should be full of people, but aren't. A w...

• 19 AUG 2023

Episode four: The You you are

In this episode we are joined by Inger’s ANU colleague and fellow podcaster Will Grant and we are talking about how no one wants to go into the break room. Like, ever. We dissect Cobel’s (unasked for) freelancing — ‘wet work’ at Petey’s funeral — and whether or not she is getting any stock options. Will disturbingly points out the ways humans are never very far away from choosing violence.Our office door is always open so please leave your comments in the suggestion box (well, the review...

• © 2023 Thesiswhisperer Pod

Top Podcasts In Society & Culture

The Research Whisperer

Just like the thesis whisperer – but with more money.

You’ve come to the right blog if you’re interested in learning more about researcher lives and cultures, how to navigate grants-speak and build your research track-record, and becoming part of an international community of scholars and research professionals. 

The Research Whisperer is dedicated to the topic of doing research in academia . We’re here to help and encourage.

• We are not a ‘how to’ guide to doing research, but we do share strategies and practical tips and techniques that work for us.
• We don’t just talk about funding. Being a successful researcher involves much more than that, and calls on a wide range of knowledge and skills. Who you are as a scholar is a complex thing.
• We want to stimulate conversations , so our posts will be opinionated, hopefully constructive, and occasionally exploratory.

We expect that a fair number of our posts will be driven by your questions and interests, so please feel free to get in touch with us through one of the ways listed on our Contact page . 

Since the Research Whisperer started in 2011, Tseen and Jonathan have written regularly for the blog. For years now, we’ve also worked with guest authors from all over the world. We actively solicit content for the blog from our wonderful collegial networks. We also consider unsolicited submissions .

Comments policy : We review comments before publication and your first comment on the blog will be held for approval (subsequent comments will not be held up). We seek to promote a collegial and supportive atmosphere. We will delete comments that we judge are not constructive or come across as aggressive or hostile. 

help us help you

We receive a fair number of requests these days and it’s always great to hear from you, especially when you’re excited about sharing new projects and ideas. Here are a few points to consider if you’re asking us to help you with something:

• We both have full-time jobs that are not Research Whisperer.
• Research Whisperer is a non-profit intiative. We do not accept sponsored posts for the blog or our social media channels.
• We do not do reviews. If you send us books or resource links, we may read and comment about them on our social channels. Or we may not because we’re fully committed to other things (it’s not malice, it’s just lack of time).
• We’re more likely to help if you have done your homework and understand who we are, what our community is like, and what interests us (hint: check out what stuff we share on the socials and publish on the blog).
• How to get the best from a busy person (Helen Kara)
• The art of the ‘cold call’ email (Inger Mewburn / Thesis Whisperer)
• Asking to share (Tseen Khoo, Research Whisperer)
• The care in requests (Narelle Lemon, Wellbeing Whisperer)

Want to use our material?

You are free to reproduce any posts from the Research Whisperer through the Creative Commons “Attribution-non commercial-sharealike” license. We would like to know how you are using our material, just out of interest, so feel free to drop us a line or include the link in the comments section attached to the feedback page.

Thanks to Wikimedia Commons user Cuman14 for the image Teoría de los Tres Mundos según Karl Popper , which we use as our profile image.

14 comments

[…] resources for postdocs and ECRs, such as Elsevier’s Bigger Brains, The Postdocs Forum, and The Research Whisperer, but I would love it if some postdocs were interested in regular tweetups, akin to the #PhDChat. It […]

Thanks for following “Honey.” I love what your blog is about. When I taught reserch many moons ago, would have loved the help.

Thanks so much for the follow. The way we’re spending money, we might need to come back here and read some of your how to articles. 🙂

[…] This week an introduction to a blog that I access on a regular basis and follow on Twitter, The Research Whisperer. […]

I’ve just discovered this blog thanks to your featured article: as an undergrad delving into such things for the first time, I’m excited to pick your virtual brains. Quite glad this exists!

We are interested in using your material for our college blog https://nickledanddimed.wordpress.com/ . Can you provide us with your email id, so we could contact you.

Thanks, Danish

All of our material is licenced under a Creative Commons licence. You are free to reproduce any posts from the Research Whisperer through the Creative Commons “Attribution-non commercial-sharealike” license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/au/deed.en So as long as you attribute the authors, and it is not for a commercial purpose, please go ahead.

If you would like to discuss this more, please contact Tseen and I at [email protected]

Thanks for your interest.

[…] some alternative less conventional approaches (and a laugh), with thanks to Jonathan O’Donnell for the link, see Justine Musk’s 25 badass ways to say no (explicit language […]

[…] and resources. These include the Thesis Whisperer, Research Voodoo, #PhD chat, Grad Hacker and Research Whisperer. Plus, social media platforms like Twitter can give you a platform to promote your own […]

Hello, I am from the CAMRT (www.camrt.ca) and I am using an attributed link from your page “Mind the Gap” in a research toolkit section I am creating for our members (this will be in a members’ only area not for the general public). Thanks for creating this great resource!

Thanks, Carly

Glad you found it useful.

Hi Tseen, Jonathon, Are DOIs embedded somewhere and i just can’t see it?! It would be great if each of the article published on The Research Whisperer had a DOI that way when I am using links to quotes in any training materials for researchers (I work in research admin) I can link effectively. I can then also add the reference to my RIS (endnote) and be able to find it later. Metrics could then also be used by authors and increase their visibility.

Hi Lia Unfortunately we don’t have the ability to generate DOIs for each Research Whisperer article. As far as I’m aware that isn’t a feature that WordPress (the blog platform that we use) offers.

[…] post is what my colleague Dr Tseen Khoo calls ‘a career limiting move’, but right now I’m not under any contracts that […]

Leave a comment Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar

New to the Thesis Whisperer? Welcome!

The Thesis Whisperer was launched in June 2010 and now contains more than half a million words. Over the years there have been over 8 million visitors to the blog, from all over the world. People have made more than 16,000 comments on well over 500 posts.

In other words, the Thesis Whisperer is Big! If you’re new to the blog, the sheer number of posts can be daunting. This page contains a list of some of my favourite posts over the years. There are better versions of a couple of these posts in my book “How to be an Academic”

If you find these posts useful, you can read about how to support the Thesis Whisperer here .

Productivity

Shut up and Write!

How to write 1000 words a day (and not go bat shit crazy)

How to write 10,000 words a day (yes, you read that right)

The last 5%

A visit from the procrastination fairy

How to stop ‘flipping’ and write a good ‘to do’ list

General writing advice

Academic writing is like a painful, upper middle-class dinner party

Why does feedback hurt sometimes?

5 ways to declutter your writing

5 ways to kill your darlings

Endnote vs… everything else

Advice on the dissertation

The difficult discussion chapter

How do I start my discussion chapter?

How to be a literature searching Ninja

Five ways to tame the literature dragon

Theory Anxiety

The dead hand of the thesis genre?

What font should I choose for my dissertation?

Choosing examiners for your thesis

How to write a Glossary

Do you really believe what you are writing?

Five ways to know you have the right thesis topic

Doing your thesis amendments without losing heart (or your mind)

Dealing with Academia

The Valley of Shit

Academic assholes and the circle of niceness

The top five #phdemotions

Learning from ‘Avatar’

Unhelpful PhD advice

Should you quit your PhD?

How to complain – and be heard

Five ways to look more clever than you actually are

Is doing a PhD like being in a reality TV show?

The perils of PhD parenting

Presenting and publishing

Confirmation – not as big a deal as you think?

The importance of being interesting

This is not just a post about Instagram

Five ways that Poster = Fail

Five classic research presentation mistakes

Five neat presentation tricks

How to sell your thesis in three minutes

Employability

What do academic employers want?

PhD career capital

I want to leave academia – what’s next?

What is your dark side?

Working with your supervisor

Mum and Dad are fighting, what should I do?

How to tell your supervisor you want a divorce

The Tyranny of the Awesome Supervisor

And finally, because no one ever gets this far back, here is the first ever post!

How is research writing different from driving a car?

Can’t find the topic you are looking for? Use the contact form below to get in touch with me and suggest a post:

Share this:

The Thesis Whisperer is written by Professor Inger Mewburn, director of researcher development at The Australian National University . New posts on the first Wednesday of the month. Subscribe by email below. Visit the About page to find out more about me, my podcasts and books. I'm on most social media platforms as @thesiswhisperer. The best places to talk to me are LinkedIn , Mastodon and Threads.

• Post (606)
• Page (16)
• Product (6)
• Getting things done (258)
• On Writing (138)
• Miscellany (137)
• Your Career (113)
• You and your supervisor (66)
• Writing (48)
• productivity (23)
• consulting (13)
• TWC (13)
• supervision (12)
• 2024 (5)
• 2023 (12)
• 2022 (11)
• 2021 (15)
• 2020 (22)

Whisper to me....

Enter your email address to get posts by email.

Email Address

Sign me up!

• On the reg: a podcast with @jasondowns
• Thesis Whisperer on Facebook
• Thesis Whisperer on Instagram
• Thesis Whisperer on Soundcloud
• Thesis Whisperer on Youtube
• Thesiswhisperer on Mastodon
• Thesiswhisperer page on LinkedIn
• Thesiswhisperer Podcast
• 12,114,230 hits

Graduate Writers Community

Writing your thesis or dissertation is hard work. join the community and make writing social., grad writing room.

Are you a UVic grad student working on a big writing project? Writing a thesis or a dissertation is exciting — but it can also be isolating. You don’t have to do it alone!

The CAC would like to welcome you to our Grad Writing Room: a co-writing group that meets regularly throughout the semester. We provide coffee, snacks, and a supportive environment where you can write silently in the company of others or get help from one of the CAC’s on-staff tutors. The sessions are casual: there’s no need to commit to the whole session or show-up each week. Our philosophy is come as you are when you can . You’ll find details about our summer 2024 writing room below!

When? Tuesdays, 9-noon & Wednesdays, 1-4

Where? Rm. 151b in the McPherson Library (just behind the computer lab [rm. 130] and adjacent to the CAC) *

Questions? Contact Natalie at [email protected]

*Confused about the where? We don’t blame you! Room 151b is a little like the Bermuda Triangle — most of us just stumble into it. If you’re having trouble finding us, just pop-by the CAC. Someone there will be happy to assist you! You can also consult this handy map of the McPherson Library’s main floor .

Share this:

Entries Now Open for Falling Walls

Does your research break down barriers in some way? Are you helping to create positive outcomes for science and society?

If so, you might want to check out the Falling Walls competition. This is a global event inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, with the question: Which walls will fall next? It is designed to uplift and celebrate student and early career researchers and innovators from any discipline who are working to (metaphorically) break down walls.

NZ entrants will give a 3-minute presentation detailing their barrier-breaking work. The winning presentation will represent Aotearoa and travel to the Falling Walls Lab Global Finale held in Berlin, Germany on 7 November, where they can meet some of the brightest thinkers in the world and compete to become the Breakthrough Winner of the Year in the Emerging Talents category of Falling Walls.

Former AUT doctoral student Ankita Poudyal (pictured below) previously won the Falling Walls Aotearoa competition, and went on to come 3rd in the world finals in Berlin! You can read about her experiences and her groundbreaking research on nano-coatings for air filters here on Thesislink.

The Aotearoa part of the competition is organised by the Royal Society. Check out their website for details of how to enter and be sure to get your entry in by noon on 31 May for the competition date of 11 September.

About Graduate Research School (Auckland University of Technology)

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Sunday song: *Where angels fear to tread*

Share this:

• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
• Click to print (Opens in new window)

About F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Leave a comment cancel reply.

• Search for:
• 493,773 hits

Creative Commons

Blogs I Follow

Welcome to the online home of the IASS

Philosophical thought from an amateur and armchair thinker. No expertise, just speculation.

Thank you all to support my Blog. God bless us all. keep safe everyone!

In Conversation with Legal and Moral Philosophers

Trying to dig out from minus a million points

Relitigating Our Favorite Disputes

PhD, Jagiellonian University

Inquiry and opinion

A promise to change your outlook about the entire universe.😉

Viewing the world with a different vision!

Life is all about being curious, asking questions, and discovering your passion. And it can be fun!

Books, papers, and other jurisprudential things

Ramblings of a retiree in France

BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH

Natalia's space

hoping we know we're living the dream

Lover of math. Bad at drawing.

Photos and Writing

Blog about economic history & comparative development

We hike, bike, and discover Central Florida and beyond

A blog about economics, politics and the random interests of forty-something professors

Making it big in business after age 40

Reasoning about reasoning, mathematically.

I don't mean to sound critical, but I am; so that's how it comes across

remember the good old days...

"Let me live, love and say it well in good sentences." - Sylvia Plath

Neuroscience and psychology news and views.

a personal view of the theory of computation

Logic at Columbia University

Just like the Thesis Whisperer - but with more money

the sky is no longer the limit

Technology, Culture, and Ethics

Just like the horse whisperer - but with more pages

Poetry, Other Words, and Cats

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar