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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Applying to a graduate research program
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Structuring a tutorial
As Director of Teaching at Melbourne Law School, I have the privilege of running inductions for new teachers at the School. It is great to meet new people, and to have an intensive discussion of how we teach. Something that was asked this term related to how to structure a tutorial. After an intensive semester of teaching, I thought it was worth noting what I do in my tutorials (as opposed to seminars or lectures, which have different aims and content). A typical tutorial structure, for me, might include: Some other great advice is available from the Oxford Centre for Teaching and Learning. My key points would be:
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Removing notes from PowerPoint: a game changer for Mac
I have been juggling a significant teaching load this year. I generally use PowerPoint as a visual aid for teaching; and, for my own purposes, often use the ‘notes’ function in PowerPoint. For accessibility, I distribute PowerPoints as an editable file – not a PDF – on the learning management system, but this often means my notes need to be removed before the PowerPoints are distributed. Deleting notes across PowerPoints is time-consuming and repetitive – there has to be a better way. There is – and it is a game changer. For those using a PC, there is a fairly simple solution to delete all notes: https://www.howtogeek.com/730732/how-to-delete-all-presentation-notes-at-once-in-microsoft-powerpoint/ On a Mac,…
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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…
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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…
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Book publishing
Academic book publishing is a fraught process. Crafting and pitching a book proposal takes time, and it takes even longer for that proposal to be (hopefully) accepted. But how do we decide which book publisher to approach? What factors should we consider in choosing a publisher? And what do we need to negotiate in a book contract? First, some things to consider in choosing a book publisher: Prestige: like it or not, prestige has to factor in to the choice of book publisher. Which publishing house is well-respected in your field? What publication will support your career progression and promotion? Impact: Which publisher is likely to have the most impact…
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How to Excel (with Excel)
Legal academics have a well-known aversion to numbers. But Excel – for all its faults – can be a huge help when managing large amounts of data, be it numbers or words. I have used Excel to analyse cases, build tables and charts, and manage all sorts of data. We spoke with Christina Ward, Liaison Librarian (Research) at Melbourne Law School, about essential tips for using Excel for academic research. Our tips: To swap rows and columns in a table, copy the table, select “paste special” and click transpose. To reverse rows or columns in a table, try this trick. To manage data, the sort and filter functions are incredibly…
