Early Career Writing Support
Getting down to doing some proper writing – papers, book chapters, book reviews, blog posts, or whatever else – can be difficult in the midst of a busy term. To help you, we have four different support schemes laid on for early-career academics this year.
Early Career Writers' Workshop
As James Thurber once wrote, 'Don't get it right, just get it written. Then bring it to the Early Career Writers' Workshop!'*
The Early Career Writers' Workshop offers a friendly, constructive occasion to share ideas about research and writing. Participants read work in advance (whether articles-in-progress or book or grant proposals) to offer sympathetic, critical feedback on writing that's nearing completion or needs jumpstarting. A great strength of the workshop is its interdisciplinarity: members bring new perspectives to bear on each other's work and help each other communicate research to wider audiences.
Meetings in Hilary Term 2016 will be on Thursday 11 February and Thursday 25 February from 5 to 6:30 at the Royal Oak. Please get in touch with Hannah-Louise Clark (hannah-louise.clark@history.ox.ac.uk) or Michael Subialka (michael.subialka@st-hughs.ox.ac.uk) to sign up to the mailing list and receive the work to the 'shopped' for the next session - or just to find out more. We ask all workshop participants to read and critique circulated work in advance.
* Unverified diary entry
Academic Writing Group
This group for DPhil students and early-career academics, a collaboration between the Humanities Training team and the Faculty of English, meets twice a week at Radcliffe Humanities. Meetings involve 15 minutes for setting up and sharing goals, a 1h15m writing session, a short break, and another 1h15m writing session. The group provides a supportive atmosphere in which to set aside the usual distractions of phone, email, and admin, and commit to manageable chunks of planned and focused writing. The sessions are usually fully booked, so participants sign up on Fridays for one or both of the following week's sessions. Please email Alice Kelly (alice.kelly@humanities.ox.ac.uk) to be added to the group mailing list for the weekly sign-up sheet.
Writing bootcamps
These intensive writing camps offer five mornings of structured writing time punctuated with tools to help you think and write more clearly, physical exercises to keep your body functioning optimally, and plenty of tea, coffee, and snacks. The bootcamps are for ECAs and DPhils, and happen outside full term, usually in -1st week. Check the events schedule for more details.
Writing partnerships and peer mentoring scheme
We are also offering you the chance to find a writing partner: if you'd like to be paired up with someone to arrange regular writing meet-ups and set goals with, whether first thing Monday to Friday in the Bod or a café afternoon once a week, and whether with a mentoring element or not, you can find out more and register your preferences here.
