Dr Blog

  • July 6, 2017
Dr Blog

Stine Ravnå founds education blog giving advice on issues relating to doctoral research.

Blogging can help democratise research by ensuring that you potentially reach out to a broader audience with research findings.

A Gates Cambridge Scholar has set up a blog for research students which provides a range of advice and insight on different issues relating to doctoral research and educational inquiry.

PhD student Stine Ravnå founded the blog on behalf of the Faculty of Education Research Students' Association (FERSA). As the academic officer of FERSA, she believed that a blog would be a useful forum for knowledge exchange and research dissemination.

Stine currently edits the blog with fellow PhD students, Tyler Shores, Danai Giampili and C.J.Rauch. The blog, which is about the PhD process as well as educational research, aims to offer helpful advice about the PhD journey and to be an informal channel for students in the Faculty of Education to disseminate and showcase aspects of their research to a broader audience.

Some of the topics covered so far include:

  • Time management during the PhD
  • How to prepare for the PhD viva

  • Making research accessible through animation

  • Tips on reading and note-taking in a digital age

  • Reflections on ethnographic research in education

  • The politics of loaded terms such as intelligence, genetics, race and socio-economic status in educational research

Together with Dr Bethan Morgan, Tyler and Stine have been co-lecturing on the educational research module "Research in a Digital Age" at the Faculty of Education. They emphasise how valuable a blog can be to get writing practice and sharpen arguments, explore ideas, and share advice and insight with both peers and others. Stine says: “Blogging can help democratise research by ensuring that you potentially reach out to a broader audience with research findings.”

Picture credit: Faculty of Education

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