A lot of people ask me about my actual writing process, so I figured I should share some of my practices, and make them into blog posts. I’m lucky that, as I write this blog post, I have a full day available to write (no meetings). The first element of my writing practice is the pre-writing stage. I am a person of rituals and routines. First, I brew a pot of coffee. My first cup of coffee is very important as it’s what sets the tone for the day. I take a few minutes to just be with myself and have my coffee. I am a Virgo, Type A, Upholder. I need routines and organization. The next step in my ..read more

A few years ago, Dr. Andrew Fischer invited me to teach a workshop that would help doctoral candidates with structuring their dissertation and write it. Though the course is called “Post-Fieldwork Workshop“, I designed it to combine combine research design with research methods, project management, and academic writing. I started teaching this workshop online, which was very complicated because obviously I had to teach at a reasonable hour for my students in The Netherlands, which is 7 hours ahead of Mexico City. Waking up at 1:00am to start teaching at 4:00am is really absolutely insane. Over ..read more

Dr. Jessica A. J. Rich is an incredible researcher, scholar, and writer. Her book, “State-Sponsored Activism: Bureaucrats and Social Movements in Brazil” is a textbook model for how to write a book in so many ways. I also study social movements in Latin America, so it was important for me to read her book and catch up with the most recent and cutting edge scholarship. Furthermore, as someone who teaches both research design, research methods and academic writing, I wanted to read it to help my students learn how to write better, particularly those who have decided to write a book-manuscript-st ..read more

I’ve taught a few workshops this year on academic writing and there’s always at least one attendee who has already completed their PhD and is looking for strategies to craft their book. Sometimes they’re looking to convert the PhD dissertation into a book, or write a new one. I promised those attendees I would write a thread & blog post on how you can use the same strategies I have developed to support graduate students to help you craft your book. Here are a few ways in which you can use my Overview Devices, frameworks and workflows to write a book manuscript or to revise your dissertatio ..read more

Much of what I do here on my blog, when I teach courses and workshops on academic research and writing, and with my own students and thesis writers is help them frame their research, “sell their ideas”, and create a narrative that showcases their innovative approach to their research. Last year, in October I visited the University of Bath to present a paper in progress on global water summits. After my talk, I had a chance to go for a walk around Bath with my dear friends Yixian Sun, Michael J. Bloomfield, and Alex De Coss Corzo. Alex and I were walking down the hill right in front of the Sham ..read more

I have been thinking about how I can help my students with their theses, particularly because our programs are rather compressed and they need to get a lot done in a very short period of time. I’ve been working on developing a strategy to discern “the gap in the literature” that I plan to test with Masters and undergraduate students. Possibly also with PhD students. I have developed several strategies to teach how to craft a good research question, how to find the gap in the literature. But when I had a meeting with Masters students recently and I taught them how to use some of my methods, the ..read more

I sat on the “Writing and Publishing” table at the Environmental Studies Section Speed Mentoring Roundtable during the 2023 meeting of the International Studies Association (ISA) in Montreal (Canada). Photo credit:Lily Hsueh. My co-panelist was my coauthor and dear friend Dr. Kate O’Neill, so we agreed to talk about the process of academic writing and publishing from our perspectives as authors and editors of books, articles, chapters and journals. Here are a few pieces of advice we both shared that will be useful for all. 1) don’t take desk rejects personally 2) review as you’d like to be re ..read more

I wrote the thread that originated this blog post on October 1st, 2022. I had not been able to blog for many reasons, one of the key ones was that I did not have time to blog. Most of the time, I plan my entire month by the end of the previous one. I did not have the time (literally!) to do so, therefore had to spend some time doing so when I wrote the thread, at the beginning of October 2022. Beginnings of months tend to be good times to start new habits. This blog post details a few practices that you might feasibly start within the next month, without pushing yourself too much, perhaps. 1 ..read more

There’s been a lot of discussion on Twitter over the past few days now from academics and tech people about calendars, synchronization and collaborative work, and I really don’t have the time to read them all but I wante to put in my two cents, so here it goes. In a previous life (I started working at a VERY young age and we won’t discuss child labor issues on here), I managed both my parents’ offices (they were lawyers). I wanted to gain administrative and management experience, in case, you know, I needed to find work to feed myself. What I learned from managing my parents’ offices was that ..read more

Dr. Jessica A. J. Rich is an incredible researcher, scholar, and writer. Her book, “State-Sponsored Activism: Bureaucrats and Social Movements in Brazil” is a textbook model for how to write a book in so many ways. I also study social movements in Latin America, so it was important for me to read her book and catch up with the most recent and cutting edge scholarship. Furthermore, as someone who teaches both research design, research methods and academic writing, I wanted to read it to help my students learn how to write better, particularly those who have decided to write a book-manuscript-st ..read more