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Writing well and being well

BY KATHERINE FIRTH

Writing Well and Being Well for your PhD and Beyond is a book that challenges the assumption that the writing is hard, damaging and stressful, and then we need to add wellbeing on top. Instead, this book gives strategies to approach every stage of the writing cycle in a way that contributes to your physical, mental and social wellbeing; or that is ethical, and helps to make the world a better place; or that works with your strengths and preferences. And at the same time, these techniques help to make your writing more effective, more efficient and more scholarly. 

This book was a joy to write, and has been described by readers as a ‘gift’: ‘calming and supportive’ with a ‘sprinkling of humour’, ‘addictively practical’ and ‘a useful review and re-thinking of the writing process’. 

Katherine Firth

Dr Katherine Firth

An award-winning educator, author and researcher, Katherine has over 15 years of experience working with thousands of emerging researchers around the world.

By Inger Mewburn, Katherine Firth, and Shaun Lehmann

Level Up Your Essays is the essential guide to essay writing for university students. Written by the people who mark your essays, it will show you step-by-step how to write high-quality essays that will get you top marks.

Described as ‘gold nugget advice’ (Weiheke Weekender), fun, accessible and essential. 

Level Up is aimed at undergraduates, but has some of our favourite PhD techniques like the Cornell Method of Note Taking, the Bedraggled Daisy and the Literature Review Matrix.

By Katherine Firth, Liam Connell, and Peta Freestone

The ‘Insider Guides to Success in Academia’ offers support and practical advice to doctoral students and early-career researchers. Covering the topics that really matter, but which often get overlooked, this indispensable series provides practical and realistic guidance to address many of the needs and challenges of trying to operate, and remain, in academia.

These neat pocket guides fill specific and significant gaps in current literature. Each book offers insider perspectives on the often implicit rules of the game — the things you need to know but usually aren’t told by institutional postgraduate support, researcher development units, or supervisors — and will address a practical topic that is key to career progression. They are essential reading for doctoral students, early-career researchers, supervisors, mentors, or anyone looking to launch or maintain their career in academia.

Accessible, insightful and a must-have toolkit for all final year doctoral students, the founders of the ‘Thesis Boot Camp’ intensive writing programme show how to survive and thrive through the challenging final year of writing and submitting a thesis.

Drawing on an understanding of the intellectual, professional, practical and personal elements of the doctorate to help readers gain insight into what it means to finish a PhD and how to get there, this book covers the common challenges and ways to resolve them.

By Inger Mewburn, Katherine Firth, and Shaun Lehmann

Are you confused by the feedback you get from your academic teachers and mentors?

This clear and accessible guide to decoding academic feedback will help you interpret what your lecturer or research supervisor is really trying to tell you about your writing – and show you how to fix it. We will help you master a range of techniques and strategies to take your writing to the next level and along the way you’ll learn why academic text looks the way it does, and how to produce that ‘authoritative scholarly voice’ that everyone talks about.

This book is an easy to use resource for postgraduate students and researchers in all disciplines, and even professional academics, to diagnose their writing issues and find ways to fix them. This book would also be a valuable text for academic writing courses and writing groups, such as those offered in doctoral and masters by research degree programmes.

(Cover links to Booktopia online bookshop)

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