Diary of a doctoral student Archive
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Mind-maps for organising the layout of a chapter, article or dissertation
Posted on August 9, 2012 |This is a part of the series, diary of a doctoral student with stories on politics, emotions and other things that determine our research beyond the research methods. One challenge that I faced while writing my dissertation was that every time I started a new chapter, I had to deal with multiple ways of organising it. For example, there were times when I could have narrated my story village by village. Alternatively, I could have organized the layout based on themes or chronology of events that would cut across each village. There was merit in organising the chapter in each of these... -
The art & craft of academic writing: Interviews & talks
Posted on August 9, 2012 |Unlike a lot of people, writing does not come to me naturally. It has been a slow and difficult learning process, and I had to contend with massive writing project as I started the dissertation. As it turned out, writing the dissertation was fun, but not always. It took me an year and a half to write the dissertation after the fieldwork, and in the process, it helped me to know what other writers had gone through. A lot of that advice came from the committee and from my peers at the University, and some of it came from webcasts on... -
The place of originality in academic writing
Posted on September 16, 2010 |A few months ago, I got the criticism that my work is not original, and that most of what I have to say has already been said, and that my arguments are evident to the point of being tautological. When I got the criticism, I felt that there is a ring of truth to it, in a sense that there is practically no argument within my scheme of things that has not already been made by others. At one point, I even started questioning if there is any value to the work I did. Since it is a feeling that... -
Publish and perish
Posted on August 29, 2010 |I discovered that the papers that I had written with a lot of hard work were cited only once in the last four years. A note on the academic peril of working hard in writing what will probably be never read by any one. To publish is to perish. Read on. -
Friendships and “research methods”
Posted on September 17, 2009 |The temptation and pressure to confirm in one’s research topic is tremendous – especially if you are a PhD student. In the course of the last 3 years many of my friends have asked me to include some quantitative element in my research. When I tell them that it does not suit my question they’d add, perhaps do what you do and then add some statistical work to it. When my (descriptive) interviews were almost done another friend goaded me to code it and regress it. The notion that regression is what makes a study authoritative is so deeply rooted... -
History in the future
Posted on September 14, 2009 |The explosion of digital information about all aspects of our lives, the places we live in, etc. will radically transform the way we write history in the future. Read on. -
I cared because I did not care
Posted on August 7, 2009 |Rumblings of an ex-activist in his early thirties Why have I ceased to care about the world? Why is my commitment vanishing? Fifteen years ago if I saw blind person struggling to cross the road, I would jump off my bicycle to help him cross, and make a mental note on how I will change public transport. Now I watch my watch and glide away hoping someone will do my job for me. I wonder today if I cared then since I did not have a care in the world. Caring parents, carefree friends and a careless school set the... -
Disciplinary training: More trained, less able
Posted on November 23, 2008 |During fieldwork in India, I was amazed by the differences between common people that I interacted with, and the well trained students in the Western world. There were significant differences in the questions each asked and the observations they made. I was often left wondering if more training in the disciplinary world leads to less sophisticated understanding of this complex social world. Read on... -
Lantern & the sea: a dream to make dissertation writing fun
Posted on April 30, 2007 |This is the fourth post I am writing today when I should be writing my paper. The term is about to end and I just don’t feel like reading or writing (don’t ask me what enables me to write all these posts, that’s the irony about me). I have been working on my topic for an year now, and am yet to defend my proposal. If I am topic fatigued now, what will become of me when I get to the writing stage? I know that I have to make writing fun – and it has often been the case.... -
I don’t feel like reading
Posted on April 30, 2007 |For the last three or four months, I have just not felt like reading anything. I have not stopped reading…but that which I read has been random stuff. My comprehensive exams are not far away, and I am in no mood to do any sustained work. Infact, I came to the office with the idea of reading and writing a paper; instead, I am writing this blog post. Part of the problem is that I’ve run out of exciting new books. I dont claim that there are none around – but I have not been able to lay my hands...
