On the importance of revision and learning with George Saunders patthomson.net/2026/06/07/l...
A bit of serious fun patthomson.net/2026/06/01/h...
Thinking about your post thesis plan? These three words can help patthomson.net/2026/05/25/k...
This is a question that’s been bothering me lately patthomson.net/2026/05/18/w...
This week Dr Rachel Lehner-Mehr talks about turning her doctoral thesis into a scholarly book patthomson.net/2026/05/10/f...
This week I’m revisiting coherence But in research design patthomson.net/2026/05/03/k...
This week I look at what it means for scholars to write concisely patthomson.net/2026/04/26/k...
Academic writing and procrastination revisited patthomson.net/2026/04/06/i...
This week patter has been reading about knowledge production as place making patthomson.net/2026/04/20/p...
What does ‘concise’ mean in academic writing? patthomson.net/2026/04/12/k...
George Saunders won the Man Booker prize in 2017 with his novel Lincoln in the Bardo. Earlier that year he wrote about his revising process. My method is: I imagine a meter mounted in my forehead, …
Everyone in academia knows Reviewer 2. You ‘ve probably received their comments. You may even in a dark moment, have been them. This post is a practical guide to achieving full Reviewer 2 status. I…
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Doctoral researchers are sometimes asked in their viva what their plans for dissemination are. Gulp. But this is a question worth thinking about. It’s not a trick question. Examiners are genu…
Graham Kendall studies academic publishing. He recently ran the numbers on what peer review costs the UK higher education sector. His calculations are worth quoting: “In the UK…
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This is a guest post written by Dr Rachel Lehner-Mear. She has recently published a book reporting her doctoral research on mothers and primary school homework. There’s nothing quite like holding y…
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Coherence in research design is not the same as coherence in academic writing, although the two are related. Research design coherence is sometimes described through the metaphor of a red thread, o…
Gratuitous pic of my dog Ted. A coherent piece of writing is one where the parts connect to the whole. That sounds obvious, but it can be difficult to achieve. That’s partly because the whole is su…
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Procrastination often gets a bad rap in academic writing advice circles. It’s generally seen as a problem to be managed, a symptom of anxiety or perfectionism. In other words, it’s a pr…
I’ve just read a paper about epistemic placemaking. Epistemic placemaking is equipping and arranging places for knowledge work. The paper suggests that students might actively co-design t…
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Concision is not the same as brevity. A short piece of writing can be wasteful with its words, and a long piece can be meaning-full right to the last sentence. Getting concise is about getting clea…
