Newsletter #13 (March 2021)
The seven-week stretch of online Semester 2 comes to a close with the prospect of two weeks of Easter ‘break’ ahead before we resume again on 12th April. It’s been a hard stretch for all of us I think, and this relatively quiet fortnight ahead is welcome. But it’s been a productive time too …
Viva Success … To begin with the most exciting …. Ivy’s viva on 25th March and the wonderful Aii outcome. Congratulations Dr Ivy. The Viva (for which I was Independent Chair) was a lovely occasion, a genuine discussion between Ivy and her examiners (Juup Stelma as Internal, and Aisha Walker from Leeds as the External) of an excellent thesis: The recursive shaping of multimedia teachers, their figures worlds, and technology use in rural Bangladesh. (PhD Education). There are just two requirements before final submission, plus three invitations to reconsider/address things arsing in the discussion. This is a wonderful outcome, one which comes hard on the heels of Ivy’s success in gaining a Senior Tutor post in MIE. What next?
Student/Alumni/Colleague/Associate Talks … The series has continued over the last month – with talks by Natasha Tsantila (an associate from Greece), by Xian and Jing (our newest members of the PhD community), and by Ivy herself (pre-Viva discussions). There were also talks about the Transforming Lives, Transforming Practice project between MIE and the local Caritas refugee education project (Gary Motteram, Susan Dawson, Andres Mora and myself), and the most recent one, led by Nahielly (with Zeynep and myself) talking about her thesis and a submitted collaboratively-written article from it.
The series resumes on 16th April, and already, I have filled all the slots filled until the end of May. This developing series, originally conceived as a couple of talks, is proving a long-lasting one !
Upcoming Opportunities … next month, Achilleas and I will be bringing the revised book proposal to you. This is a proposal to produce a coherent but diverse volume exploring the challenges and experiences of publishing during and from a doctorate with individual narratives exemplifying different experiences, different approaches, different stances, different challenges, successes, setbacks etc. We are thinking that the overall frame (which will give the volume coherence) could be ecological, i.e. looking at those narratives and what they reveal about the shaping influences on the authors’ publishing endeavours. But there may be space also for other frames of interest to us (e.g. epistemic justice, researching multilingually, reflection, reflexivity, etc)
Next month we can also return to the idea of a summer event and when this might be and how it might be organised. I welcome ongoing discussions/suggestions/comments etc about this.
Reminder … please remind yourself of your Lantern blog username and password and get back in the habit of posting things (news, plans, events, prompts for discussion, etc).
See you all after (western) Easter.
Actually, Achilleas, it was on my list for the Newsletter, but I decided against it. So, instead, lets see if we can create an event with some examples of reviewer feedback and responses to it ?
I agree, that could be very useful. In the meanwhile, perhaps this post might be of some interest:
https://achilleaskostoulas.com/2018/05/01/peer-review-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/
First things first: Thunderous congratulations to Ivy on the well-deserved viva outcome. Many of us had the opportunity to see her present her work a couple of weeks ago, and I think I speak on behalf of all when saying that both the research and the presenter were highly impressive. I was particularly interested in the way Ivy developed her own, contextually appropriate research methodology. This is a very useful methodological contribution, and one that she should consider publishing about.
While on the topic of publishing, I also really enjoyed Nahielly (et al.)’s talk on the article that you’re publishing. It’s a shame that we didn’t have much time to talk about interacting with reviewer feedback, and I was wondering if this could be a useful topic for a talk in the next few weeks.