Over the course of putting together Creating Justice: Human Rights and Art in Conversation with my brilliant co-editor, Eliza Garnsey, I learned a lot about collaboration, the importance of meticulous planning, and the joy of seeing a vision come to life. Here are six lessons I took away from working on this project – lessons that I hope might just help you put together your own edited volume.

"I love to chitter-chatter about ideas with others. It is in the community and presence of others that ideas flow best to me; I feel inspired as ideas are passed back and forth in conversation." – Nicole Wegner

Impostor syndrome is really, really common in academia. It comes up in a significant proportion of the coaching calls I have with clients, even if it’s not the issue we think we’re there to talk about. And it can be a stressful, isolating, horrible experience that has an impact on all aspects of your life...

The rise of alternative-academic and academic-adjacent careers has opened up new possibilities for scholars who want to explore life outside the traditional academic career ladder. But the thought of starting your own alt-academic business can feel daunting. Is it financially viable? Is the administrative hassle worth it? Where do you even begin? If you’ve ever considered making the leap, this post outlines five essential steps to help you consider the transition from academia to entrepreneurship.

Alright, so: you’re at a conference, mingling with colleagues, when someone asks: “So, what do you do?” You have just a few seconds to capture their attention and clearly share your research and its significance. This is where your academic elevator pitch comes in very handy indeed. An elevator pitch is a concise, compelling summary of who you are as a researcher, what you study, and why it matters. It’s an essential tool in both academic and professional settings, helping you make a memorable impression, whether you’re networking, interviewing, or simply introducing yourself...

Have you come across the myth of “But I can’t do anything else”? Many academics feel trapped by the belief that their current research focus or career path is the only option available to them – that they aren’t qualified to pursue a career outside of a university. This mindset makes you feel stuck, limits your growth… and it’s just not true.

Receiving feedback on your academic writing can be a mixed bag. Praise feels great, but negative feedback? Yeah, it sucks. However, it is an unavoidable part of sending your academic writing out into the world, and developing your own strategy for handling negative feedback constructively is absolutely essential in order to grow, both as a writer and scholar…

Into the final stretch and getting your thesis ready to submit? Excellent. Let me share with you the little tips and tricks I wish I had known when I was in the last couple of months of my candidature in the hope it makes this last push a little easier for you…

“Some of my favourite things in life – peonies, puffins, mangoes – are all seasonal joys, and I await their return each year. I’m learning how to let writing also be part of that chorus, so that I can relish it when it happens, and trust that it will return again.” – Shambhawi Tripathi

“For a long time, I felt trapped in academic writing. As I began experimenting with creative writing, I discovered that it offers simple and concrete techniques to invigorate writing practices without sacrificing the precision of our findings.” – Marie Beauchamps

You don’t want the reader to be able to see your development as a writer as they read through your thesis; you want there to be a consistent voice that runs throughout. In your read-through for voice, then, what you want to do is pick up on where needs some more polishing from a consistency perspective…

“I don’t write every day, but on some days, writing is the only thing that I do. There aren’t enough of those days though.” – Rahul Rao

I was invited to offer some tips for navigating academia as an early career researcher for the wonderful 'Making Space in International Studies' workshop, and I thought my reflections might be useful for a wider audience, so I wrote my notes up and expanded on them a little into this very blog. Enjoy!

The idea of signposting is that you’re telling the reader where they’re going, and where they can find all the important things. You’re reminding them of what they’ve already read, and giving them advance notice of things they are going to come across soon…

“I’m starting to feel more at ease disrupting the disciplinary confines of academic writing and exploring new forms of expression.” – Lucy Hall

You’ll see lots of writing productivity tips out there. I have probably read all of these tips and tried to follow those routines myself. But what seems to happen is it works for a week, maybe, and then I spend the following week on the sofa thinking that I’ve used up all my words and they’ll never come back. This is a problem because my entire income is based on me either writing words or fixing words other people have written. I need the words to stay with me…

When it comes to writing or editing your dissertation, your style guide is your secret weapon for consistency. It will help you get your dissertation looking great, from the very first word of your title page to the very last word of your appendix.

I really enjoy working collaboratively. But when it came to my relationship with words? I was a sucky collaborator. And then recently, in my trusty research journal, I found myself writing two questions : ‘What if my writing and I worked together?’ and ‘How can I be a good collaborator for/with my writing?

It’s common for supervisors to say: ‘It’s now time to edit your dissertation’, and for you to think: ‘Great!’ and then really soon after ‘But what does that even mean?’. Copy-editing and proofreading your dissertation are some of the most important things you will do before it goes off to the examiner, which makes knowing how to edit your dissertation crucial.