Wellbeing in Doctoral Education: An Introduction.- 1 Prelude: The topic chooses the researcher.- 2 A short history of doctoral studies.- 3 Tensions between disciplinary knowledge and transferable skills: Fostering personal epistemology during doctoral studies.- 4 Autoenthography: Researching personal experiences.- Understanding Yourself: Fostering Intrapersonal Wellbeing.- 5 Intrapersonal wellbeing and the academic mental health crisis.- 6 You are not your PhD: Managing stress during doctoral candidature.- 7 Negating isolation and imposter syndrome through writing as product and as process: The impact of collegiate writing networks during a doctoral program.- 8 Walking a tightrope: Juggling competing demands as a PhD student and a mother.- 9 Struggling with mental illnesses before and during the PhD journey: When multiple treatments join the healing process.- 10 Maintaining emotional wellbeing for doctoral students: Indonesian students' mechanism of thinking out loud.- 11 Wax on, wax off: Maintaining confidence and overcoming anxiety.- Understanding Your Experiences: Building Identity and Agency in Academia.- 112 Identity and agency as academics: Navigating academia as a doctoral student.- 13 When questions answer themselves: Proactive reflection and critical eclecticism in PhD candidature.- 14 It is about time: Chronotropes and the experience and negotiation of space-time through PhD candidature.- 15 Shouting down a well: The development of authorial identity in thesis writing.- 16 Understanding the uncertainty: The use of diffusion of innovation theory to inform decision-making during the doctoral experience.- Understanding Others: Developing Intercultural Competence.- 17 Processes of globalisation in doctoral education.- 18 Effective intercultural supervision: Using reflective practice to enhance students' and supervisors' intercultural competence.- 19 Prospering in thesis writing: From self-reflexivity to ideological becoming.- 20 Climbing the proverbial mountain: How I developed my academic writing during my doctoral training.- 21 Learning through critique: Intercultural awareness in student-supervisor feedback practices.- 22 The third space: Fostering intercultural communicative competence within doctoral education.- The Road to Wellbeing.- 23 The flow experience in the doctoral journey.
Dr Lynette Pretorius is the Academic Language Development Advisor for the Faculty of Education at Monash University in Australia, where she works with both undergraduate and postgraduate students to improve their academic language and literacy skills. Lynette has qualifications in Medicine, Science, Education, as well as Counselling, and her research interests include experiential learning, reflective practice, doctoral education, mental health, and cardiovascular physiology.
Luke Macaulay is a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Education at Monash University in Australia. Luke’s PhD research explores the experiences and perspectives of Sudanese and South Sudanese youths in Melbourne, Australia regarding the transition to adulthood. Luke’s previous education is in Philosophy, as well as Religion and Theology, and his research interests include cultural experiences of becoming an adult, social and political belonging, and critical social theories.
Dr Basil Cahusac de Caux recently completed his PhD in the Historical Studies Program of the Faculty of Arts at Monash University in Australia. His research interests include the history of contemporary Japan and language policy in East Asia in the 19th and 20th century. Basil’s doctoral dissertation focused on the factors and forces influencing script reform in mid-to-late 20th century Japan.
This book offers a range of personal and engaging stories that highlight the diverse voices of doctoral students as they explore their own learning journeys. Through these stories, doctoral students call for an academic environment in which the discipline-specific knowledge gained during their PhD is developed in concert with the skills needed to maintain personal wellbeing, purposely reflect on experiences, and build intercultural competence. In recent years, wellbeing has been increasingly recognised as an important aspect of doctoral education. Yet, few resources exist to help those who support doctoral students.
Wellbeing in Doctoral Education provides a voice for doctoral students to advocate for improvements to their own educational environment. Both the struggles and the strategies for success highlighted by the students are, therefore, invaluable not only for the students themselves, but also their families, their social networks, and academia more broadly. Importantly, the doctoral students’ stories should be a clarion call for those in decision-making positions in academia. These narratives demonstrate that it is imperative that academic institutions invest in providing the skills and support that doctoral students need to succeed academically and flourish emotionally.