By Emma Shortis On Wednesday, 9 November 2016 (Australian time), I rolled in to an Election Day event hosted by the University of Melbourne and the American Chamber of Commerce. I had no real idea what I was doing there. I was supposed to be representing the university and giving my expert opinions on the election results as they came in, flashing up on the … Continue reading Suddenly you’re an expert: historians in the media
By Dr Ben Vine As we begin the first semester of 2019, a number of graduate students and early career researchers will be taking tutorials or lecturing for the first time. Teaching is something everyone early in their academic careers knows they will have to do at some point, but there usually aren’t many university resources devoted to preparing you for that moment you stand … Continue reading Five Tips for First Time Teachers
By Dr Joshua Specht No part of my graduate coursework emphasized writing. It was assumed that we could all construct a sentence, a paragraph, and (hopefully?) a dissertation chapter. As someone who struggled with his writing in the early parts of graduate school, this was frustrating. Since then, I’ve realized people with PhDs don’t talk about improving academic writing very much either. But they should. … Continue reading “How To”: Academic Writing
By Dr Joshua Specht Note: this is the text from a guide I made for grad students preparing to give their first conference paper. Here is a pdf of the handout this draws from. Below are my key suggestions to giving a strong presentation. General tips are on the reverse. People engage with presentations fundamentally differently from written work. This is a curse and a blessing; when listening to … Continue reading “How To”: Giving Conference Papers and Presentations
By Dr Joshua Specht Note: this guide is for writing the 500-750 word “academic summary” review. Some of these suggestions are helpful for longer reviews or review essays, though those are much more about making an argument about the book or historiography. What do you do if you’re unsure whether you need to read that new book about rats in revolutionary Paris or the untold … Continue reading “How To”: Write An Academic Book Review
By Dr Joshua Specht I’m not sure how I got here, but my first book is basically finished. Along the way I learned a few things about revising a dissertation. Here’s the one-sentence take: keep it simple, focus on the writing, and follow deadlines. For the longer version, read on. I start with three overarching suggestions, then suggest a potential revision process, before ending with assorted … Continue reading “How To”: Dissertation to Book
by Dr. David Longley The last few months of my PhD were, for me, among the most enjoyable of the entire process. I had gone through that initial phase of excitement at tackling a unique topic, wading through primary sources for those wonderful nuggets of illumination, the long middle slog of writing the chapters I knew to be weaker than the others (we all have … Continue reading Finishing a Phd
