WTMC PhD Writeshop 1 October 2021 at Social Impact Factory

On Friday 1 October 2021, WTMC will organize the next Writeshop at Social Impact Factory, Utrecht. WTMC Writeshops are meant for WTMC PhDs who are in the second, third or fourth year of their PhD trajectories.

WTMC Writeshops are a splendid occasion to receive comprehensive comments on your own work, but also to read work of your fellow PhD candidates. By carefully reading the work of others in order to give feedback you can learn a lot about writing. At the Writeshop we also discuss more general issues around finishing journal articles, book chapters and dissertations, and what to do with them once they are done.

We are very happy to announce that Sally Wyatt will act as our senior discussant in this Writeshop. In case more than four PhDs register, we will find a second discussant.

Wyatt’s field of interest are the social aspects of digital technologies. She is particularly interested in the internet and social exclusion and the ways in which people incorporate the internet into their practices for finding health information. Together with Andrew Webster, she is editor of a book series, Health, Technology and Society published by Palgrave Macmillan. Wyatt has received major research grants from the UK Economic and Social Research Council and the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council. She has acted as an adviser to the European Commission’s Science in Society programme as well as to several European research councils interested in establishing and/or evaluating social science research about new information and communication technologies. Wyatt is now Professor of Digital Cultures at Maastricht University, and one of the coordinators of the VSNU’s Digital Society Initiative.

The idea of the Writeshop is as follows. Each participant sends in a draft chapter or article that will be part of the PhD manuscript. Authors are also invited to provide a short (i.e. 2-300 word) contextualization of the draft. During the meeting, two discussants provide comments – a fellow participant and our senior discussant. The author then has an opportunity to respond to these comments before the discussion is opened to everyone. Each paper is discussed for a total of 55 minutes.

Depending on the number of participants, the Writeshop will start at 11:00 at the Social Impact Factory in Utrecht. It will end with an informal dinner, and it will end no later than 19:30. If national COVID-19 regulations won’t allow for an in-person meeting, the Writeshop will take place online.

This Writeshop will be chaired by Andreas Weber (a.weber@utwente.nl) and/or Anne Beaulieu (j.a.beaulieu@rug.nl), the PhD programme coordinators of WTMC.

The word limit for contributions is 10,000 words. The manuscript must be academic work-in-progress (i.e. not already published). Do not worry if your text is not perfect yet: this is precisely why you would want to discuss it in this forum. The draft should be well enough developed so your readers can understand the argument and the material, in order to get more specific and helpful feedback. Make sure your paper includes a short introduction which explains how the piece fits into your PhD, which journal you plan to send it to, or any other relevant details to help the reader understand the text.

Depending on the number of participants, the day may last from 11 AM until 5 PM.

Contributions must be sent to Elize Schiweck (e.schiweck@utwente.nl) by 10 September 2021 latest, as doc.files (no PDFs). She will then send them to all participants prior to the meeting so that everyone has time to read all of the chapters. You will also then receive a concise reader with practical information.

To reserve your place, please complete this Google form no later than 6 September 2021!