The Emotional Dimensions of Doctoral Writing: A Community Writing Retreat for PhD Students

Following on from the success of the online writing workshops that the WHC team have run over the last academic year, we are hosting an in-person writing retreat.

How do you make progress with doctoral writing when the challenge is not just time or technical skills, but the more emotional aspects such as uncertainty, confidence, or overwhelm play a part? For many PhD researchers, writing difficulties are often not just technical around grammar and structure, but they can be bound up in the emotional dimensions of doctoral study writing. Yet these challenges are frequently experienced in isolation.

This one-day writing retreat is designed to address this problem by creating structured space for doctoral writing, alongside collective reflection and peer support. Developed by the WRDTP’s Wellbeing, Health and Communities (WHC) pathway team, the day highlights writing challenges as a shared feature of doctoral research, rather than an individual problem.

The day will be led by Dr Natalie Hammond from Manchester Metropolitan University, Deputy Director of the Wellbeing, Health and Communities (WHC) pathway. The retreat combines sustained writing time with facilitated small group discussions focused on understanding and addressing the emotive challenges of writing, such naming the emotional barriers to writing, sustaining momentum and managing self criticism. These conversations are intended to normalise struggle, share diverse writing practices, and enable participants to learn from each other.

Outcomes

By the end of this retreat, participants will be able to:

• Recognise and articulate the emotional and psychological dimensions of doctoral writing, including uncertainty, self criticism and writing resistance, as common features of PhD research rather than individual deficits;
• Develop realistic, sustainable writing practices that support progress across different stages of doctoral study;
• Engage in peer learning and scholarly community building, recognising writing as a relational research practice embedded within research cultures.
  

Contributors

Dr Natalie Hammond is a Senior Lecturer in Health and Social Care at Manchester Metropolitan University, and Deputy Director of the WRDTP’s Wellbeing, Health and Communities (WHC) Pathway. Her research interests include: sexual and reproductive health and rights and gender-based violence; issues around gender, health and violence; and the intersections between climate, health, gender and violence.