About the project
The Wellbeing When Writing project was run by the Graduate School at the University of Westminster during 2018–2019. It was funded by Research England/OfS’s Catalyst fund for PGR Mental Health and Wellbeing and by the University of Westminster.
In the Graduate School, we believe that the wellbeing of any doctoral researcher is strongly linked to their writing experience. We noticed a spike in applications for suspensions and mitigating circumstances at the pinch points in the year when doctoral researchers needed to submit work for their annual progress review (APR). In response to this evidence of high levels of stress and anxiety, the project featured a series of interactive workshops. These were each tailored to a specific year of the doctorate, addressing the specific writing demands of that stage.
For each workshop, exercises and practices developed through the pedagogies of creative writing were adapted to the demands of doctoral writing across subjects and disciplines. These were designed to mitigate the stress and anxiety so often associated with writing, to increase doctoral students’ confidence as writers and to improve their overall wellbeing.
Since this project, Wellbeing when Writing is included in the University of Westminster’s Doctoral Researcher Development Programme, as the ‘Writing and Thriving’ series.
Resources
We hope that colleagues across other institutions will find the following resources useful in developing such workshops or materials for their own doctoral researchers.
Exercises and activities
The workshops were led by experienced teachers of Creative Writing, all of whom had doctorates. The exercises and activities that they developed and used can be found in the document below. The activities and exercises for each year are addressed to doctoral researchers, but it’s easy to see how the materials can be used by research development managers, trainers and academic staff responsible for the development of doctoral researchers.
Session templates
The following templates were used for each session and can be adapted to the needs of your own institution and students: