As doctoral education grows increasingly interdisciplinary, long-standing assumptions about how research writing is learned are being challenged. In this talk, Kristin Solli presents findings from a study of doctoral candidates in a Nordic interdisciplinary research school, showing how they navigate diverse writing conventions through broad networks of support.
Overview
- Date:Starts 12 December 2025, 13:00Ends 12 December 2025, 14:00
- Language:English
Titel
Doctoral candidates’ experiences of writing and socialization in interdisciplinary contexts: Implications for supervision
Presenter
Kristin Solli is associate professor of English at the Unit for English for Academic Purposes at OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University in Norway. Her research interests include doctoral education, doctoral writing, writing pedagogy, and the thesis by publication as a genre.
Brief description
Doctoral education has become increasingly diverse, with growing calls to move beyond disciplinary boundaries to address complex societal challenges. The growing importance of inter- multi- and transdisciplinary research requires writing researchers to reexamine the principle that writing conventions are primarily developed within monodisciplinary research communities. However, research on how the prominence of interdisciplinarity in research affects doctoral writing and the supervision of doctoral writing remains limited.
This talk draws on a study that explored experiences of interdisciplinary writing and socialization from the perspective of doctoral candidates who were affiliated with a Nordic interdisciplinary research school during their doctoral trajectory. Findings show that although disciplinary writing conventions and formal supervisors remained important, the candidates relied on broad, distributed networks of socializing agents in developing rhetorical flexibility to negotiate diverse discourse conventions. Some of the key implications for supervision from these findings include: 1) supervisors should take an active role in making explicit the often implicit expectation that doctoral researchers demonstrate proactive agency in navigating different disciplinary conventions; 2) supervisors should support candidates in managing feedback from a range of socializing agents beyond the formal supervisory relationship; and 3) institutions that provide doctoral education need to rethink the current emphasis on individual supervisors towards a broader model of supervising agents working together.