Academic Practice

The Draft Publication is a compulsory element of the MWP. It is a way of ensuring that Fellows produce a piece of research of publishable quality that has benefited from feedback from both a substantive and formal (linguistic and presentational) point of view. Fellows are invited to view the requirement flexibly as an occasion to produce draft articles, book chapters, or working papers. The deadline for submission is 31 March. In case of publications outside the EUI, Fellows are expected to inform the MWP Team. The MWP should also be credited within such publication. Fellows should publish on the EUI’s open-access repository Cadmus. Fellows are encouraged to submit information about recent publications to Cadmus and to the MWP Newsletter and are required to list the Draft Publication in their individual page of the MWP Annual Report.

Individual feedback on September Presentations provides the opportunity for one-on-one sessions with a member of the EUI Centre of Academic Literacies and Languages (CALL) to identify and discuss areas of potential growth in the field of academic public speaking skills. Fellows are assigned a time slot to receive feedback.

This workshop offers a comprehensive guide to public speaking in a global academic setting. Fellows will learn, for example, how to conduct a target audience analysis, develop content and structure it for maximum impact, create and effectively use visual aids that support ideas, or handle tough questions. The aim is to show that public speaking in an academic setting may be an exciting, enjoyable, and energising experience.

The Conference Skills workshop is designed to familiarise early-stage researchers with the core principles of effective organisation of academic conferences. It addresses both stages, planning and managing a conference, and focuses on practicalities related to diverse issues, such as writing the conference call, team development, communication before, during, and after the conference, timetabling, slot chairing or choice of conference session formats. These workshops can be particularly useful to those volunteering to be part of the Organising Committee of the June Conference.

English 601 – From Dissertation to Book

This course supports Fellows in developing their dissertation project into a book; it thus supports a key career development need for many of our community at the EUI.

This course comprises 3 ‘blocks’ of 4 workshops that will help participants work towards the publication of a monograph based on their dissertation. The blocks are standalone, so Fellows might want to join one in their first year, then another in their second year. Attendance is expected to be in-presence. Fellows should be aware that they need to set time aside to work on these tasks to participate fully in the block they are attending.

The first block focuses on the book proposal, from identifying a potential publisher to how to reframe your dissertation’s contribution as a more substantial intervention in the field that will look ‘marketable’ to a publisher. In the second block Fellows will revise a body chapter to make its form and style more appealing to a wider scholarly audience. The third is also an opportunity to revise a book chapter but is run more as a writers’ group (with peer and teacher input).

English 602 – Style in Research Writing

The overall aim of this course is to expand the expressive range and enhance scholarly ‘voice’ and effectiveness. By the end of this course participants will be able to: make stylistic voice sound clearly; understand how syntax and vocabulary affect style; understand how style affects the reader. Topics will include (according to participants’ needs and interests): information flow and how to modulate it by using conventional and ‘marked’ (emphatic) sentence structures; active vs. passive voice (reasons for using or not); I/we as part of a scholar’s ‘rhetorical toolkit’; typical tense use in different parts of the research paper; other topic(s) indicated as relevant by participants in the pre-course task that will be sent to all participants.

This course takes the participants' own research writing and that of established scholars in their fields as a starting point to explore the interface between form (grammar/syntax), style/rhetoric, and argumentative structure.

English 603 – From Draft to Submission

This course is designed to help early-career researchers turn a pre-existing draft (e.g., a conference paper, course paper, or thesis chapter) into a publishable academic journal article. The sessions address both rhetorical and stylistic issues related to drafting and revising your article. With the needs of early career academics firmly in mind, the aim of this course – inspired by Wendy L. Belcher's Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks (Sage, 2009),but also drawing on other materials – is to get a journal article into publishable form. Participants need to be able to commit to the entire length of the course and will profit most from it if they already have an article on the go, ready to be revised, and can set aside a significant amount of time between each session (approx. 5+ hours) in order to work on articles.

English 606 – Creative Research Writing

This 8-week course is intended to help think about, refresh, and hopefully enjoy writing creatively about research. The intention is not to encourage to submit a piece of creative writing to a research journal or dissertation supervisor; it is to reflect on technical and stylistic decisions, and to equip participants to write for other audiences; even how to push the limits of scholarly prose. Participants will be reading short extracts and essays each week and thinking about style, address, mode(s) of argumentation, uses of evidence, and lots of other things. Some of the authors on the list for this year are: Ted Chiang, Kodwo Eshun, Alison Gopnik, Christina Sharpe, and Mackenzie Wark. Thanks to the collaboration with the European Review of Books, their editors have agreed to read and comment on the end-of-course submissions, provided they’re in good enough shape to send.

Writers’ Groups

Supportive peer feedback can be a powerful catalyst for productive, sustained research writing and publishing. Fellows are encouraged to form self-organized Writers’ Groups (usually 4-5 Fellows, on a disciplinary basis or according to common research interests) to obtain regular feedback from colleagues on draft articles and chapters prior to journal submission. The Programme provides a platform, advice on how to set up and run a group, and logistic support. If interested in convening a group and you have identified a core group of interested colleagues, Fellows should contact the MWP Team for support in getting started.

All written work (articles, book reviews, book chapters etc.) for which Fellows would like revision/editing should be sent directly to the editor Alyson Price ([email protected]). Meetings to discuss work may follow.

Individual consultations provide the opportunity for one-on-one sessions with a member of the CALL team to discuss research writing in progress. These sessions can also be used to look over your application materials, revise book or research proposals, prepare and practice ‘dry runs’ of conference presentations and job talks, do interview practice, or support other professional communication needs. It is possible to arrange also on-site and online teaching observation and relative feedback.

The Teaching Certificate Module reflects global trends in the domain of teaching and learning practices in the Higher Education (HE). Reconciling traditional and innovative teaching theories with the day-to-day pragmatics is often easier said than done, especially when students’ and institutions’ expectations grow and external factors keep changing the rules of the game unexpectedly. This is why this programme is set to enhance Fellows’ ability to develop their own teaching skills set and adapt to the diverse teaching environments of national and institutional cultures in a fully flexible and professional manner.

The programme includes the creation of Fellows’ own teaching portfolio that will be based on Fellows’ previous formal, informal and non-formal experience and training; six face-to-face sessions focused on (a) introduction to teaching at HE institutions and course design, (b) lesson design, (c) teaching tools and methods, and microteaching practice, and (d) feedback, assessment and reflection; a Teaching Practice Week in a partner university. The Teaching Module and partner universities for the Teaching Practice Week are presented in September during the ad hoc Preparatory meeting.

This series of workshops is designed to familiarise early-stage researchers with essential skills that can be effectively adopted in writing project and grant applications and proposals. It offers sessions which address project and grant applications and proposals from several perspectives, such as appropriate content and style, effective organisation, clarity in structuring information and specific audience analysis. Through participative activities, Fellows will gain hands-on experience with some best practices, discuss issues and have an opportunity to reflect on their own approaches and strategies.

Introductory workshop on developing an effective ‘job-market package’ (CV, cover letter, supporting documents) and targeting it to a specific job call/position to ‘make the match’ most effectively. The workshop is designed for those who anticipate being on the job market during the current academic year or are interested in general in how to strategically present their academic profiles with specific career opportunities in mind.