UAL: Writing Retreat: Middling – Writings in the Middle

You are warmly invited to the UAL Doctoral School Autumn Writing Retreat, which this year focuses on the idea of middling – the rich, sometimes disorienting, always productive space that sits between the early momentum of a PhD or research project and its eventual consolidation. This phase can feel like a threshold: no longer at the beginning, not yet at the end, and deeply embedded in work that is still taking shape.

The retreat invites researchers, and the research curious, to write from within this middle space, not to resolve it, but to understand it as a site of creative enquiry. Across two days, participants will write, rest, and reflect, supported by guided activities, shared dialogue, and dedicated quiet time.

Sessions explore writing processes, somatic and reflective practices, methodological wayfinding, all approaches that helps researchers inhabit and navigate the stretch between early certainty and later clarity.

Themes and aims of the retreat

· Working with the challenges and energies specific to the mid-research phase

· Re-establishing momentum without the pressure of completion

· Reconnecting with purpose, voice, and direction

· Sustaining motivation and navigating uncertainty

· Exploring writing as process rather than product

What we’ll be thinking about

· Writing through doubt or difficulty

· Methods for revisiting or reframing research questions

· Creative or reflective approaches to structuring work-in-progress

· Practices that surface shifts in contribution, identity, or ownership

· Techniques for grounding, pausing, or recalibrating during long-form research

Framing prompts for inspiration

· What does it mean to be ‘in the middle’?

· How has your research, writing, or researcher identity changed over time?

· What sustains you across the long arc of a project?

· How might we write with the middle rather than resist it?

Sessions range from micro-engagements of 10–20 minutes, to longer sessions of up to two hours. The full schedule will be released closer to the time.

For further information, please email Bob Whalley at b.whalley@arts.ac.uk and we welcome participation from across disciplines and career stages.

Sending very best wishes to you,

Dr Bob Whalley