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Just like the thesis whisperer – but with more money, author: thesis whisperer, 5 quick and dirty tricks for the terminally busy researcher, don’t just throw your keys in the bowl.

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Thesiswhisperer Pod

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The podcast feed for Thesiswhisperer.com: tune in for audio projects produced by Professor Inger Mewburn from The Australian National University. Scroll down in the feed for past projects, including 'Academics Talk about The Chair' and 'Your brain on Writing'... Coming soon: 'Academic workers talk about Severance'

Episode Nine: The We, we are

It's the final episode of Severance, and it's really fucking tense! For our final show this season, it's just us: Outie Anitra and Innie Inger, talking about episode 9. So much happened this episode! So many big reveals, and new plot lines opened. Helly has the most Dystopian Cinderella moment, Mark is Ricken's fanboy, Dylan is taking one for the workers collective and Irv only says a single word (but he makes it count). We still live in hope for season two - hopefully we won't be i...

Episode Eight: What's for dinner?

Worker solidarity is the theme of this episode, and in celebration, we invited Anitra's current boss, Geoff Stringer. Don't worry though - he's not going to rat us out to the higher ups.The team dissect episode: What's for Dinner. This is the episode where Inger had to text Anitra all the way through because it was so damn tense. Plans are made, dreams are broken - most importantly, certain people are at the 'find out' stage of the Fuck Around journey. And we are here for every delicious mome...

Episode Seven: Defiant Jazz

You'll never look at mandated company fun the same way after this episode, especially when it becomes clear that inter-departmental politics can get its own body count. Prof Narelle Lemon, who is now at Edith Cowan University, joins us again to dissect episode seven of Severance. There's so much in this episode - the action is really heating up. Milcheck tries his best to keep a lid on the simmering tensions, and only earns himself a bite from Dylan. There is no Ricken in this episode, b...

Episode Five: The grim barbarity of optics and design

We saved this one for Anitra's co-worker and Director of Digital Experience, Joyce Seitzinger, because it is the infamous "bring-your-baby-goat-to-work" day episode. There is also a lot of Ricken in this ep, which gives us an excuse to talk about our favourite academic. Anitra compares Ricken to Yoda while Joyce points out that the comparison works only if Yoda were really really self-involved. Plus, mysterious baby goats.Our office door is always open so please leave your comments in th...

Episode Six: Hide and Seek

Love is in the air in episode six of Severance, where inter-departmental politics is platonic. Sort of. Maybe. Bert and Irv grow closer, Mark and Helly take the work flirt to the next level and Devon has a mysterious encounter in the local park... Anitra's work colleague and future novel co-writer Chris joins us this week to dissect the many Kier mystery kinda-reveals. He also gives us a word to describe that spooky feeling of buildings that should be full of people, but aren't. A w...

Episode four: The You you are

In this episode we are joined by Inger’s ANU colleague and fellow podcaster Will Grant and we are talking about how no one wants to go into the break room. Like, ever. We dissect Cobel’s (unasked for) freelancing — ‘wet work’ at Petey’s funeral — and whether or not she is getting any stock options. Will disturbingly points out the ways humans are never very far away from choosing violence.Our office door is always open so please leave your comments in the suggestion box (well, the review...

Episode three: In perpetuity

In Episode Three of Severance, work friendships take a dark turn and we discuss it all with Anitra’s ex-and-current-coworker, Senior Learning Designer Miriam Renoyldson. Anitra mangles the word 'cishertrowhitemaletriarchy', which Miriam then neatly illustrates by pointing out that all the five founders of the University of Melbourne Business School were white men named John.We discuss how corporate bingo cards is the ultimate act of symbolic violence, and Inger warns about buying white s...

Episode two: Half Loop

We focus on Episode Two of Severance and are joined once again by our friend and academic wellness expert Professor Narelle Lemon.We delve into the topic of corporate gaslighting and how the work of MDR is the best description ever of analyzing student experience survey results.Along the way we touch on the unique grief caused by corporate restructures and deconstruct the strategies used to give purpose to purposeless work.In much the same way as Ricken outs Mark S for being severed, Inger ou...

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• Channel Thesis Whisperer
• Creator Thesiswhisperer
• Years Active 2021 - 2023
• Episodes 16
• Rating Explicit
• Copyright © 2023 Thesiswhisperer Pod
• Show Website Thesiswhisperer Pod

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Where to for the Thesiswhisperer?

A little content warning for this one friends – I mention my own mental health in the context of talking about the future of the Whisperer. If you want to skip it, I understand and would appreciate you considering filling in my reader survey here . The link will appear again below the explanation that follows. 

At the end of 2018 I had a fairly significant mental health episode. I wrote about it here .

Basically, I was so exhausted by 20 years of academia – physically, mentally, emotionally – I ended up spending weeks in bed with all kinds of weird physical symptoms. I fretted. I wondered if I was ever going to recover. I also really scared my family and work colleagues by the speed and severity of my collapse. People begged me to make changes, so I slowed down the posting schedule to once a month and stopped editing and featuring other people’s posts (a significant workload in itself).

I thought I had recovered from the first breakdown fully, but I had a similar collapse right at the start of the pandemic.

While the second collapse was not as bad, or as long, it showed me I must be permanently alert to my own vulnerability and make even more changes to the way I work. One of the most significant changes I made in 2020 was to turn the comments off. I did this reluctantly because I love my readers and wanted to keep Thesiswhisperer as a place where they could connect with each other. But there was no doubt that reading so many accounts of trauma took a toll.

I used to spend considerable time making the Thesiswhisperer comments section a safe space, moderating comments and responding compassionately to these stories of heartbreak, confusion and trauma. But I never felt what I did in the comments section was enough . I started to feel like the whole PhD enterprise is broken and questioned my own role in perpetuating the trauma, as I wrote about here . In retrospect, I think the comments on the Whisperer caused a form of moral injury for me, and I wonder if they sometimes amplified other peoples’ feelings in unhelpful ways. Moderating was also depressing work. Reading some of the cruel, mocking and straight up vicious trolling made me angry and exhausted on a daily basis. Turning off the comments was a profound relief.

I encouraged people to write to me via email and talk to me on Twitter, and many continued to do so, but the site visits for new posts dropped over time. People clearly enjoyed the community aspect of the blog and did not visit as frequently, but they continued to come here to read stuff in large numbers. The overall traffic stayed strong thanks, perhaps, to the size of the site as a whole. Over time, many links have been built to specific posts on topics like quitting, feedback, writing and career advice from other sites, including many universities. Supervisors and researcher developers frequently tell me they use specific posts in their teaching. Others tell me they have favourites they share when others reach out for help. People find their way to the Whisperer from all sorts of places and, once they get here, spend a lot of time browsing over a decade worth of interesting content.

It’s slowly dawned on me that I am no longer really running a blog, which is a kind of online diary, but a huge goldmine of valuable ‘content’ – which needs to be managed quite differently.

This site contains nearly 1 million words now, words written by myself and others that speak to all facets of the PhD experience. From feedback over the years, I realise these words have relevance beyond the PhD, and resonate in the working life of academics everywhere. It is an immense privilege to own such a goldmine, but it is also a responsibility. I am considering where next for the Whisperer. It needs to be less of a blog, organised by time, and more of a growing, online library, which needs to be organised… differently. But I am still not sure how.

While I will continue to add to the Whisperer, I want to make the site fit for purpose for the majority of visitors. I am considering a major site rebuild to make the blog less of a feature and the ‘back stock’ of content more accessible and searchable. This will probably involve migrating the site off WordPress and into some other management system, while not breaking the links that already exist: an enormous (and expensive) job. I want to get it right.

I need your help to design the new site. I would appreciate you filling in this Reader Survey to help me decide the future direction of The Thesis Whisperer.

Survey Monkey assures me that it will take you less than two minutes, so I hope you’ll consider filling it in. You can also write to me if you have more thoughts. You can email me on [email protected] and my DMs are open on Twitter – @thesiswhisperer

Thanks and see you next month with the last post for the year!

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The Thesis Whisperer is written by Professor Inger Mewburn, director of researcher development at The Australian National University . New posts on the first Wednesday of the month. Subscribe by email below. Visit the About page to find out more about me, my podcasts and books. I'm on most social media platforms as @thesiswhisperer. The best places to talk to me are LinkedIn , Mastodon and Threads.

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View Scopus Profile

Prof Inger Mewburn

Director of Researcher Development

• The Australian National University
• School of Culture, History & Language
• 609 Citations
• 318 Citations
• 78 Citations

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Professor Inger Mewburn is the Director of Researcher Development at The Australian National University where she oversees professional development workshops and programs for all ANU researchers. Aside from creating new posts on the Thesis Whisperer blog, she writes scholarly papers and books about research education, with a special interest in post PhD employability, research communications and neurodivergence.  

Qualifications

Ph.D (University of Melbourne)

Research Interests

PhD Student experience

PhD graduate employability

Neurodivergence in PhD study

Generative AI and academic writing

Research student supervision

• Registered to supervise

Fingerprint

• 1 Similar Profiles
• Professional Occupations Social Sciences 100%
• Social Media Social Sciences 50%
• Case Study Social Sciences 35%
• Job Description Social Sciences 32%
• Occupational Career Social Sciences 32%
• Precarious Employment Social Sciences 28%
• Design Studio Social Sciences 28%
• Personnel Social Sciences 28%

Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

Dive into details.

Select a country/territory to view shared publications and projects

Research output

• 2 Conference contribution
• 2 Meeting Abstract
• 2 Review article
• 1 Entry for encyclopedia/dictionary
• 1 Comment/debate

Research output per year

A Machine Learning Analysis of the Non-academic Employment Opportunities for Ph.D. Graduates in Australia

Research output : Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• Machine Learning 100%
• Workforce 50%
• Training Education 50%
• Educational Policy 25%
• Employability 25%

How to Fix Your Academic Writing Trouble: a practical guide

Research output : Book/Report › Book

• trouble 100%
• Academic Writing 100%
• Postgraduate Student 100%
• Technique 50%
• Faculty 50%

Australian doctoral employability: a systematic review of challenges and opportunities

Research output : Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review

• Systematic Review 100%
• Gray Literature 100%

Hate working weekends? Try a time tracker

Research output : Contribution to journal › Comment/debate › peer-review

• Horror 100%

Level Up Your Essays: How to get better grades at university

Projects per year

PostAc Individual - Development of discipline specific module on Psychology

George, A., Mewburn, I. , Busby Grant, J., Grant, W. & Suominen, H.

19/02/21 → 28/02/23

Project : Research

PostAc Individual A speciality job search engine for researchers

Mewburn, I.

17/04/20 → 18/05/23

Development of a Learning Interface Platform for use in Machine Learning System Coding

Mewburn, I. , Grant, W. & Suominen, H.

7/06/17 → 30/06/20

• Platform Interface 100%
• Software Development Tool 100%
• Learning System 100%
• Data Analytics 50%

Tracking Trends in Industry Demand for Australia's Advanced Research Workforce: Pilot Study (BCS 06-2015-1-SEEK)

Mewburn, I. & Grant, W.

1/07/15 → 30/07/16

INSIGNIA: An open badge system for research training and supervision at ANU

1/02/14 → 31/07/15