Dai Wenqi is currently pursuing her PhD in Applied Linguistics at the School of Languages, Literacies and Translation at the Universiti Sains Malaysia ('Science University of Malaysia'). She is now in the second year of her PhD career. She has worked as a Chinese language teacher in Africa for five years. Her research interests are intercultural communication and teaching Chinese as a foreign language.

PhD Abroad: How to Navigate Intercultural Interactions 

Are you studying for a PhD abroad? Are you worried about integrating meaningfully into your PhD life in a different country? In this article, Dai Wenqi explores how to socialise and adapt to a new culture during your PhD abroad, providing advice from her lived experiences to help you enjoy your doctoral life to the fullest. This includes respecting and engaging with the culture of your host country, learning the language (but forgo the pressure of perfect fluency), and leaning into your unique personal charm.

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How to Handle the Jump Straight from Undergrad to PhD 

Are you considering going straight from an undergraduate degree to a PhD, skipping the master’s? At 22 years old, Tess shares her experience of this and provides some valuable insights about how she prepared and applied for her PhD in Computing without doing a master’s degree.

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My PhD Journey As An International Student

Marika Strano, a first-year PhD student in English Literature at Swansea University, shares her journey as an international student in her PhD program. Despite the difficulties and rejections she faced before being accepted at Swansea, Marika was thrilled when she finally received her offer to study in the UK, but she also shares the challenges of being an international student and how it affects her mental health.

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