Fires, Snowballs and Grey Literature
Imposter Syndrome - begone!
Hi friends!
Happy Wednesday. Twitter has been on fire again after applying a temporary view limit on users across the platform. This is just another issue in the long line of dumpster fires that have been created since Musk’s takeover last year. More to come from us on this but for now - we’re tooting over on Mastodon - come say hi!
Articles of the Week
Pride month may be over but that doesn’t mean LGBTQ+ issues and educational pieces are muted until next June. Our first article of the week by Atteberry-Ash and colleagues (2019) explores LGBTQ social work students’ experiences with harmful discourse.
This week is NAIDOC week in Australia. NAIDOC week is an acknowledgement and celebration of the First Nation's People of Australia. The observance lasts until Sunday and we thought it a great opportunity to share this Goodways podcast episode on connecting with elders with you.
Next up - grey literature. We’ve had some great conversations across our community this week about commonly accepted forms of knowledge. An MA student in our community asked whether it would be acceptable to cite an unpublished thesis in their own thesis or not and it lead to lots of meaningful discussion on ontology, purism, traditionalism and more. Grey literature is a term used to describe information that comes through less traditional avenues - blogs, newsletters, theses, press releases etc. Here’s Kousha et al (2022) on the high scholarly value of grey literature before and during Covid-19.
Finally - we’ve had some questions from students hoping to use our community for participant recruitment. While we can’t fairly facilitate this process within the PGRH, we fully acknowledge the value social media offers in this space (except Twitter now because *someone* ruined it). Here’s an article on snowball sampling via social media for participant recruitment by Leighton et al (2021).
Community Spotlight
This week we shine our community spotlight on Sally-Anne Wherry!
Sally-Anne Wherry (she/her) is a senior lecturer in Gloucestershire, where she teaches postgraduates. A specialist Parkinson and movement disorder nurse, she now teaches nurses in topics such as prescribing and research. She is currently working on a PhD around intergenerational trauma in the Contaminated Blood Scandal in the Haemophiliac community. She is using exo-autoethnography and qualitative methods.
Sally-Anne has been a PGRH community member since our early days, and has gained widespread recognition across the network for her remarkable ability to source almost any article or publication - if you can describe it, Sally-Anne can find it.
Since becoming a member, Sally-Anne has demonstrated incredible kindness and generosity with her time, skills and resources and is always more than willing to share her vast knowledge and to support others in their academic journeys.
We are always blown away by and appreciate Sally-Anne’s profound reflections and insights on issues in qualitative research and academic self-exploration.
We chatted with Sally-Anne last week so that we could help you get to know her! Here’s some of what we spoke about…
Q1. What part of your academic journey are you at?
I feel that I am in the middle of it – I have been lecturing for around five years now, both at Gloucestershire and in Canberra – and I have published a few times for my Masters and my PhD. I’ve discovered a lot about myself and have made the transition from nurse to academic in my mind.
Q.2 What made you join the PGRH and what do you get the most from the community?
Discord is a relatively natural environment for me, which really helps in settling in. I felt that there was a risk of the PhD being a lonely journey for me and I wanted to find others to share support and resources. Sharing the highs and pit of despair is a way to get through them, and finding others doing autoethnography has been super valuable to me – it is an unusual method and I am finding my feet with it so having companions on that journey is lovely!
Q3: What advice would you give to yourself if you were starting out in academia again?
Boundaries. I would tell myself that setting myself on fire to keep others warm will not help anyone in the long term. Although academia is a flux and flow environment, I went full in and became burnt out and exhausted. I would tell myself to not take on everything and focus on my core work. Weigh up each opportunity in terms of what it can do for my career instead of people-pleasing!
Q4: Did you have a favourite teacher in school, if so – why were they your favourite?
I did! Mr Hardiman was super kind to me – I was not comfortable at school and I didn’t know how to learn, so I really struggled. He took extra time and really saw me, the first person who noticed that I used my social skills to get off trying too hard!
Latest from our Community
Here are some brief updates from across the PGRH network 👩💻
Book Club Meeting
Our book club (Bookies) is due to meet on Wednesday, August 2nd at 10 am (GMT).
The meeting will take place in our Book Club channel on Discord. We hope to see you there!
Reminder: We’re reading Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner.
Coworking
We’ve got two virtual coworking sessions happening this Thursday (tomorrow). Session A kicks off at 10 am (GMT) and Session B at 3 pm (GMT). Bring your to-do list and join us for some virtual writing/reading company.
Our format: mics off, cameras on (if appropriate) and chat box open for those who wish to say hi!
Join us on Thursday, or drop by our server and get to know our coworking group for informal or impromptu sessions!
Research Resource
Toggl - Need to track your time across projects? Toggl has got a free project timer and a super handy Chrome extension to go with it. This is particularly useful for those of us in our data collection phases - I’m currently using it to track any time differences that might appear while I collect data across three different topics. Could make for a nice reflexive piece later…
Also, you’re brilliant - even though Impostor Syndrome might tell you otherwise. Here’s a piece on Why You Feel Like A Fraud And How To Overcome It
Bonus Bits
On the Reg Podcast: A podcast by the Thesis Whisperer. Inger and Jason discuss research productivity hacks and take some deep dives across academia - fun and informative!
The Stonewall You Know is a Myth, and That’s Ok: Here’s an interesting YouTube video from the New York Times on Stonewall. An engaging exploration of media, culture, queer life in the 1960s and the importance (or not) of bricks.
Obsidian: Many of us across the community are Obsidian users. We’re planning a huge deep dive into Obsidian soon (maybe even some live tutorials) but until then, we just wanted to drop the link for the software. Have a look at it, and watch some explainer YouTube videos, we’ll be back with more here soon!
Playlist: LoFi is always my go-to work genre. Here’s a playlist of LoFi covers of popular songs, enjoy!
See You Next Week
If you like this newsletter, or you’ve gotten some value here - please consider sharing us with a friend or colleague! See you next Wednesday.