Driven largely by efficiency imperatives, many universities have come to adopt a managerialist approach to research over the last several years. University administrators have become actively concerned with the traditionally long times taken to complete a PhD and high attrition rates. Consequently, the PhD, and PhD students’ experience of struggle when writing a PhD, is now often framed by universities as a problem to be managed. This framing is problematic if we consider that, for many students, the personally demanding nature (...) of the PhD is central to the research process. In the first part of this article I discuss the contemporary administrative response to the PhD. I then go on to discuss the lived experience of writing a PhD, from the students’ point of view, drawing on my own and other students’ accounts. I utilize the writings of Maurice Blanchot in my analysis, who views the personal ups and downs of writing as integral to knowledge production. (shrink)

The semiotic world that we inhabit is fast changing in terms of the resources that are used and the practices in which many engage. Yet the institutional norms governing highly consequential academic texts – students’ texts assessed as part of their disciplinary-based activity and scholars’ papers submitted for publication – lack engagement with this array of resources and, epistemologically, continue to drive a monologic stance towards academic meaning making. The aim of this article is to argue for a reconfiguring of (...) the textual goal of academic writing, through one simple yet transformative tool, that of juxtaposition. Textual juxtaposition is illustrated in this article, and its intellectual and ideological value discussed, drawing on Bakhtin’s emphasis on dialogue, using several examples from published academic texts. The relevance to scholarly and student writing is explored. (shrink)

This article reports on the results of a project which used a social network site to support students on a year abroad and foster informal learning, particularly in the area of intercultural communication. The project employed a peer-mentoring structure to solve the problem of role conflict, in which users of these sites may feel some tension as the academic and social dimensions – two contexts usually kept fairly separate – of their lives collide. This article describes how students used the (...) site, reports on the benefits of the project to both students and mentors, and sets out some recommendations for increasing the sustainability of social network sites as pedagogical tools in other educational contexts. (shrink)

This article challenges the predominance of modularization across the UK university system, arguing that the fragmentation of the learning experience which results from this model undermines the possibility of a disciplinary understanding. It proposes instead a practice of imaginative writing which, by engaging students’ experience, interest and enthusiasm, encourages them to develop an appreciation of their discipline and the intellectual and discursive resources to participate meaningfully in it. The argument is supported by detailed discussion of the teaching and learning experience (...) on a final-year course in French literature and thought with specific reference to the writing assignments that balance intellect and creativity. (shrink)