The Mindful Researcher

For the past seven years or so, I've kept up a (mostly) daily mindfulness meditation practice. One of the things this practice shows me on a regular basis is how difficult it is to be really open. We are not used to opening to our felt experiences and sensations or to the unknown. Most of our moment to moment experience goes unnoticed in the swirl of life, as we are either too busy to stop and observe, or if space opens up we reach automatically for distractions. Both busyness and distraction are ways of avoiding or staving off the discomfort that simple or empty moments present (e.g. sitting on the bus, waiting for a coffee, eating a meal). Our daily lives are guided mostly by force of habit, and in particular, the habit of moving towards comfort and away from discomfort. Meditation offers training in openness. It challenges us to simply observe and sit with our experiences as they unfold. As a method, it asks us only to watch. In insight meditation (which is the for...

Earlier this month I gave two lectures to the new cohort of Masters research students in the Faculty of Arts. For most of these students, this year will be the first time they've ever attempted a significant research project (20,000 words), and so my talks focused on research planning and management, the student-supervisor relationship and thesis writing groups. I themed these sessions around the transition from coursework to research and discussed the various other shifts this change entails. Some students find it difficult to establish an independent working routine without the external structure provided by regular classes. Some find the openness of thesis writing challenging - having grown used to detailed assignment guidelines and rubrics, the uncertainty of the process and freedom to direct your own project can be initially overwhelming. And many struggle with the shift from receiving graded feedback on polished essays to participating in an ongoing, qualitative and negoti...

I first had the idea for this blog last September whilst teaching a new course called The Mindful Researcher . I wanted to offer research students a course that would bring the principles of mindfulness into conversation with the research process. Based on my previous experience as a PhD student and observations drawn from my current work as a Postgraduate Learning Advisor, I could see common themes and problems emerging around the experience of doing research. Doctoral research is challenging in and of itself - the sheer volume of reading and writing, designing and carrying out experiments or fieldwork, and the pressure to publish, present at conferences, gain work experience and develop networks. But an aspect of this task that often gets overlooked is the mundane, everyday experience of sitting with one's work and oneself. This can sometimes be the hardest part of a research degree. A colleague of mine recently pointed out that a 3-4 year PhD is roughly 1100-1400 days s...