The Researcher Development Team at the Institute for Academic Development (IAD) have been putting together a programme of writing support for WriteFest; an annual event run during November, catering to the specific needs of academic writers.
Please visit our webpage for more information: WriteFest 2024
WriteFest is run every year at different universities across the UK, and it’s great that we can be part of this celebration of academic writing. At the University of Edinburgh, being able to offer this support to our research staff and students, to allow them to develop writing habits, block out protected time to write and do it in a community environment, is something that we are keen to support. Writing can be hard and often just setting aside some dedicated time to tackle a writing project is all researchers need.
As part of WriteFest 2024, the IAD has organised several morning and afternoon writing retreats, with options for both online and in-person, along with shorter online researcher writing hours. We also have a number of writing focused workshops for staff and students. This year we’ve added dedicated writing retreats for PIs, including a PI Power Hour, an afternoon PI writing retreat, and a themed writing retreat focused on Narrative CVs – this is part of the new suite of support for Principal Investigators (PIs) and research leaders that was recently launched at the University: PI Support
In addition to our writing workshops and retreats, we will also be blogging about writing related topics, whilst also getting different perspectives via guest blogs. We’d welcome guest blogs from our researcher community too; anything happening locally during WriteFest, or any experiences or benefits from attending writing retreats, please just email iad.researchers@ed.ac.uk with any suggestions. Have a look at our writing themed blogs. We also have the option to subscribe to the IAD4Researchers Blog, so you will be notified when we post anything: Subscribe here
Our WriteFest Padlet is available to share writing support, add writing articles you’ve found that are useful, share writing hints/tips, or to look for some writing inspiration. Please use this virtual space to share and celebrate writing achievements.
We have built up a bank of writing resources to support researchers with their writing projects. Our PGR SharePoint space has a dedicated ‘Writing’ section, which houses these writing resources, and for staff these can be found on our Online Resources section of our webpages.
Taking some time out of your daily routine to attend a writing retreat may seem to some like a luxury they can’t afford. To others it can feel like it’s not going to be enough time to get all your writing done. However, you’d be surprised at how many people are using writing retreats to progress, and complete, their writing projects and how just setting aside some time for writing, and especially in a social environment writing with others, is becoming so beneficial to researchers with their writing projects.
Why not consider joining the WriteFest community to focus on your academic writing this November.
