I am a second-year creative writing postgraduate research student (thesis working title: ‘Reclaiming Cabaret. A Queer Haunted Autoethnography Of Real, Researched And Imagined Stories Of Cabaret Past And Present’). The creative element of my thesis is my autoethnographic novel, Blond Angel, - a queer haunted recollection of my life in a small touring cabaret dance company in Italy between 1980-1986. This exposes the gap in recent dance history, pertaining to British dancers who worked the cabaret nightclubs of Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. I also story people and places from the origins of the modern cabaret in fin-de-siècle Paris, bringing the past and present together in a magically real space, where real, researched and imagined lives meet, haunt and interact within my lived experience. The critical reflection evolves the use of the autoethnographic novel as a qualitative research methodology, valuing personal and evocative writing as equal to conventional academic research. This approach resists the patriarchal discourse of traditional academic narratives.

Navigating Reflexivity: A Guided Example to Move Beyond Reflection

Need guidance writing the reflexivity section of your thesis (or indeed writing reflexively throughout the thesis)? This article defines reflexivity as going beyond reflection to consider the influence of our positionality on our work. It covers three main types of reflexivity – personal reflexivity, methodological reflexivity and philosophical reflexivity – and includes some working examples to illustrate the thought processes and questions that facilitate transparency and rigor in research.

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Finding the Right Supervisors: An Underrated Springboard to Enjoying the PhD Journey 

Mentors and supervisors are invaluable helpers on our PhD journey, yet this aspect of a PhD is often not considered enough to ensure they are the right fit for us. This article, from a Ghanian perspective, provides advice on finding and maintaining the right supervisors, who have the potential to completely transform one’s PhD journey into an enjoyable one. It reminds us that supervisors should be seen not as someone to try to replicate, but to springboard us into attaining our own personal goals.

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