Enhance Your Writing Toolkit Part 1

This half-day workshop is organised by the Civil Society, Development and Democracy (CDD) Pathways and is open to all ESRC and non-ESRC funded PhD and MA Social Research students within the WRDTP’s seven partner universities. Whilst this workshop is aimed at CDD Pathway students, PGRs from all seven interdisciplinary Pathways are welcome to attend. This practical workshop is designed to introduce PGR students to writing approaches and techniques beyond those in academic writing. Participants will explore the utility of techniques both during research, for example in ethnographic description, and when writing up, for example when incorporating interview transcripts. It will consider the role of the researcher as author, and the use of creative writing as data or research output. The sessions are led by Emily Diamand, Royal Literary Fund Fellow and a published author across a range of forms, from fiction and poetry to academic articles.

In workshop 1, participants will examine academic writing as an extended creative process, with an introduction to writing methods that can be applied throughout, including supportive approaches to issues such as writers’ block. Participants will then be introduced to techniques from creative writing that are relevant to qualitative research, particularly immersive descriptive writing and attention to detail. The workshop includes practical activities and discussion, and is particularly suited for PGR students who are starting data analysis and those in the writing up stage of their PhD research project.

Students are encouraged to attend both Enhance Your Writing Toolkit Part 1 and Enhance Your Writing Toolkit Part 2 (8 May 2024)

Students attending this training will gain:

• The opportunity to learn from an expert writing practitioner, and ask questions that are relevant to their own research writing.
• A greater understanding of their own writing process and supportive approaches for handling difficulties during writing up.
• An understanding of how to apply non-academic writing approaches for descriptive writing and to deliver additional insights during ethnographic research.
• The knowledge and skills necessary to deliver high quality written outputs.