-
Applying to a graduate research program
As academics, we receive many queries relating to admission to PhD and Masters by Research programs. Most academics are time poor and receive dozens – if not hundreds – of emails each day. Graduate programs are highly competitive: at Melbourne Law School, only around 15 applicants are accepted each year. At an institution like Melbourne Law School, it is not necessary to have a supervisor on board before applying, but it can be useful to have early correspondence with a potential supervisor about a research proposal. So how can you make sure you stand out, especially if you don’t already know a potential supervisor? A potential supervisor is trying to assess whether…
-
Writing a submission to government
Universities are strongly emphasising the impact agenda. For legal academics, impact can often take the form of contributing to law reform. Sometimes, our area of law is not on the agenda, and achieving impact may require direct emailing or contacting policy advisors or politicians to try to attempt to bring an issue onto the political agenda (with variable levels of success). At other times, though, our area of expertise is the subject of law reform inquiries, consultations, or legislative reform processes. In this case, there is arguably an important public benefit to us writing submissions to government, drawing on our scholarly expertise. This is important for research impact, but also to help…
-
So you want to leave Jurism and return to Zotero
For legal academics, the Jurism branch of Zotero has been a splendid gift for years. It allowed cases and legislation to be accommodated in Zotero, making legal research far smoother. (Though, I confess, I never managed to optimise the legal side of Jurism as much as I had hoped – I often ended up manually referencing cases and legislation and using cross-references as required.) For the last few years, though, Jurism has not been updated or supported (since 2023) and there’s no real sign that it will change. On the other hand, Zotero has been getting regular updates, improvements and support for newer machines and Word/OS versions. So what should we do…
-
Planning for publication and impact
I had the privilege of speaking at the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand Postgraduate and Early Career Researcher Workshop 2024 on understanding impact and disseminating law and society research. The workshop offered a wide-ranging discussion of publishing, impact and navigating an academic career as an ECR. If you aren’t yet a member of the LSAANZ, do consider it. As part of that workshop, with A/Prof Bridgette Toy-Cronin of the University of Otago, I put together some handouts and activities to help ECR attendees think about their publication choices and how to embed and plan for research impact. I thought those questions and prompts were worth sharing…
You May Also Like
Applying to a graduate research program
-
Tracking impact
Universities are increasingly attuned to the ‘impact’ agenda – seeking to measure and quantify the impact of our work on society. The Australian Research Council defines ‘research impact’ as ‘the contribution that research makes to the economy, society, environment or culture, beyond the contribution to academic research.’ In many fields, ‘impact’ is measured through citation counts. This is problematic for multiple reasons: self-citations can ‘game’ citation counts (and are included in most citation measures); and a highly cited article could be cited a lot because it is so bad! So use citation data with caution. Also, we need to contextualise any impact data in the context of our field; so…
-
Making the most of a grant
After six (disrupted) years, I have finally come to the end of my Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. It has been an incredible privilege to spend this time intensively researching. I think – I hope – I have done that privilege justice. You can see my grant outputs at ageworks.info. But what isn’t often talked about is how hard it can be work to work on a large grant alone for so many years. The camaraderie of teaching is gone, and there are no grounds to complain when things get tough – being on a grant is a privilege, after all! Suck it up, sunshine. Intensively researching…
-
Be brave: how to negotiate open access rights with your publisher
For Open Access Week 2020, I spoke with Dimity Flanagan (Manager, Scholarly Communications) at the University of Melbourne about why open access is important and the practicalities of making research open. My thoughts (originally published here) are reposted below. Q. Why is it important to you to take the extra time to make sure more of your research is available open access? For me, open access is important for a number of reasons. First, it is a way in which we can ensure that publicly-funded research is made accessible to the public. Second, open access extends the reach and impact of our scholarship. I have discovered this somewhat by accident:…
