Professional, academic and personal: Stories from a doctoral journey

Doctoral students can come from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds and may have worked as established professionals in their respective fields before embarking on their doctoral journey. What does this mean for how they see themselves as scholars and professionals?

Drawing from their open access UCL Press book ‘Becoming a Scholar: Cross-Cultural Reflections on Identity and Agency in an Education Doctorate’, former IOE students Maria Savva, Lynn Nygaard, David Channon, and Muireann O’Keeffe reflect on how their doctoral journeys intersected with their personal and professional lives, challenging their sense of who they are and where they belong.

Topics that will be covered include shifting notions of identity, finding a community, navigating tensions in supervisory relationships, conducting research in a non-western culture, struggling with imposter syndrome, and juggling the practical demands of professional work with the theoretical demands of academic work for those who continue to be employed in the field while pursuing their studies. The event will also involve group work and discussion.

This event will be particularly useful for those interested in prospective, current and past doctoral researchers and supervisors. 

Speakers

• Maria Savva - PhD, LaGuardia Community College, New York
• Lynn P. Nygaard, EdD - The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)
• David Channon - EdD, Centre for the Development of Academic Skills at Royal Holloway, University of London
• Muireann O’Keeffe - EdD, Head of Learning Development, Faculty of Arts and Tourism, Technological University Dublin, Ireland 

Related links

• Centre for Doctoral Education
• Becoming a Scholar: Cross-cultural reflections on identity and agency in an education doctorate