PhD Talk

In today's episode of the PhD Talk podcast, we interview Dr. Veronika Cheplygina, associate professor at IT University Copenhagen in Denmark, blogger, and cat lover. We learn about Veronika's career path, and how academia has been pushing her away as well as pulling her back, and how she found her current position. We also learn about her research in machine learning, and the application...

In this episode, we discuss the topic of work-life balance. First, we look at findings from the literature on this topic, which Eva has used to write an encyclopedia entry about (and since this entry is a tiny part of a large project, it will take time before it will see the light of publication). We look at findings from the literature on work-life balance satisfaction in general, the history of...

In today's episode, we interview Dr. Lena Karvovskaya. Lena did herPhD in theoretical linguistics at Leiden University. After her PhD, she took up a job as a data manager at Utrecht University Library and then went to the library of VU Amsterdam to become a community manager for research data management.  We learn from Lena's research on endangered languages during her Master's stud...

In today's episode, Rico interviews Eva on the research she did with a group of international colleagues on the impact of COVID-19 on academic parents. We discuss the main findings of the research, that show that the negative impact on the research of academic parents is considerable, that most academic parents found more challenges than opportunities, and that associate professors are dealin...

In today's episode, we interview Dr. Jennifer Polk, who has a PhD in history (2012) and has been working as a career coach and consultant since 2013. She is an expert on  the challenges PhDs face transitioning to employment. We learn from Jen how she went from being a PhD in history to a career coach, and what her research back then has in common with the work she does nowadays. She explains...

In today's episode, we discuss Rico's experience in replying to the comments of the reviewers on his first journal article. We discuss the timeline between submission and receiving the comments, as well as what one can expect from various journals here. We also discuss the time it takes to implement reviewer comments and write the rebuttal, as well as the process Rico and his colleagues...

In today's episode, we interview Dr. Marissa Edwards from the UQ Business School at the University of Queensland, Australia. One of the topics she has worked on, is mental health and well-being in students and educators, which is the main topic of today's episode. Join us to learn more about Marissa's research on whistle-blowing, medical negligence, and mental health and well-being...

In today's episode, we address a number of questions that our listeners sent in through Twitter and other sources. Here's a list of topics we touched upon in this mixed mailbag episode: our current work, our summer goals, and how much of it we achieved, our plans for the fall semester, our potential plans for conference travel, leaving industry to start working on research, and what that...

In today's episode,  we interview Dr. Ashley Hughes, Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a Research Health Scientist at the Edward Hines JR VA Medical Center. She received her doctoral degree in Applied Experimental Human Factors Psychology in 2016 and Masters in Modeling and Simulation in 2013 from the University of Central Florida. Her research extends human fac...

In today's episode we continue on the topic of the literature review. In previous episodes, we discussed our reading habits, and today we take a deeper dive into what comes after reading all these interesting articles: writing the literature review. This episode focuses on writing the literature review section for a journal article as well as writing the literature review chapter of the PhD t...

In today's episode, we interview Dr. Hao-Ting Wang. She is a Postdoc Fellow at University of Sussex and Brighton and Sussex Medical School. Originally from Taiwan, she completed her BSc in Psychology in National Chengchi University, and then a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at University of York, UK. Her work involves brain-behavioral phenotypes discovery using functional MRI in large open acc...

In today's episode, we discuss how to select the right journal for your article. When it comes to selecting a journal, we discuss how to get the right advice and which tools you can use to decide where to send your article. We also discuss other topics to consider when selecting a journal: time to decision, indexation, copyright, open access, and other aspects that can be important for you to...

In today's episode of the podcast, we interview Horacio Perez Sanchez, who is a professor in Spain and host of the podcast Investigando la investigacion. He is the principal investigator of the "Bioinformatics and High Performance Computing" Research Group at the Universidad Catolica San Antonio de Murcia. We talk about his background, and current research. We also learn how much co...

In today's episode, we discuss Rico's experience of writing his first journal article. We discuss how much of the research was done before Rico and his coauthors started writing the paper. We also learn about their co-creation process of writing in work sessions through videoconferencing. Another topic we discuss is what Rico experienced as the easiest and hardest parts of the process, a...

In today's episode, we interview David Cañarte, who recently got his PhD in the department of Sociology and Criminology & Law at the University of Florida. David, who is originally from Ecuador, has a background in design and marketing. He has studied in Ecuador, the Netherlands, and the United States. We talk about David's meandering career path, and how his path and his wife's...

In today's episode, we take a deep dive into the topic of research in difficult times. We look at how COVID-19 has impacted our research and how we work - a topic we've also previously discussed with our guests on the podcast. We discuss what worked to keep going, or how to keep doing some work in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Our best advice for dealing with difficult times is: L...

In today's episode, we interview Baris Celik from the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent. In his PhD research, Baris examines the crisis management operations of the European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). We learned about the research of Baris, his findings with regard to what drives certain policy decisions in situations of in...

In this episode, we address a variety of questions from listeners: How is research similar to content creation? (blog, podcast, Instagram)  How have you seen academic parenting evolving through the years you've been in academia? I have the feeling that now it has become more accepted (comparing to when I was an undergrad) Which advice would you give your younger self? We also discuss our plan...

We are back with another episode on Open Science. In this episode, we interview Frederique Belliard and Just de Leeuwe from the Delft University of Technology library on open access publishing: from the perspective of the TU Delft library which encourages researchers to publish open access and from the perspective of the TU Delft publishing house. Listen to this episode to learn about how Frederiq...

In today's episode, we discuss our use of analog and digital tools. First, we discuss where we use analog tools and where we use digital tools. We then go into the advantages of these different tools. We also go off on a tangent on keyboard styles and how this influences how we type (and thus, how we write). Finally, we give some advice on how to select your tools for the purpose you have in...

In today's episode, we interview Dr. Nosipho Makhakhe from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. She holds a PhD in humanities, more specifically in health promotion. We were eager to learn more about her use of qualitative methods and her research in particular. You will learn in this episode more about Nosipho's research with sex workers, her recommendations for qualitative...

In today's episode, we discuss the so-called imposter syndrome, which is generally defined as having feelings of not deserving what you have achieved despite external evidence of the contrary. However, calling this feeling a "syndrome" actually pathologizing a rational reaction to being in a hierarchical, competitive place like a university, surrounded by high achievers  (as Patter...

Today, we interview Anke Versteeg and Nicole Will from the library of Delft University of Technology to learn more about the topic of open science. We learn what we can do to contribute to open science, and learn how open science is much more than open access publishing, as well as where researchers can learn more about open science (for example the open science MOOC). Data management is key here!...

In this episode, we discuss our experience with online teaching through the COVID-19 pandemic. We share our best practices, and lessons learned. Here's the summary of our tips: Tips: Less is more, in terms of content and tech tools More than just reduce content: put kindness and compassion for students first Much more leniency with deadlines and evaluation strictness Flexibility with office h...

In today's episode, we interview Dr. Pravina Manoharan, cohost of the Cheeky Academics podcast and Chair of the music department at USM Universiti Sains Malaysia in Malaysia.  We learn from her what it's like to get a PhD in ethnomusicology, what doing a PhD in a creative field such as music looks like, some misunderstandings people have on what a musician does (hint: it's much more...