Retreats for Scientists
These five-day residential retreats are designed for PhD researchers whose projects follow an empirical, hypothesis-driven approach. They are particularly suited to researchers who already have a clear research question, a defined methodology, and data they are in the process of analysing or writing up.
“This retreat made me think in ways I haven’t thought in years. It is easy to become bogged down in the anonymity of the data, and to stifle your voice to attempt to make the message more formal. But that isn’t the most effective form of information dissemination. This retreat reminded me of that.”
Writing Retreats for Experimental Researchers
Many doctoral researchers at this stage find that their writing lags behind their thinking. They know what they have found, but find it challenging to communicate it with the clarity, confidence and authority their work deserves. The thesis may read as a sequence of reports rather than a coherent argument; results chapters may present data without fully interpreting it; the discussion may understate the significance of what has been found.
The retreat combines taught workshops in the mornings, with free writing time in the afternoons and evenings, and individual feedback from both tutors on their writing. Morning sessions are built around the IMRaD structure, moving through each major section of a scientific thesis or paper. The aim is to give researchers a practical toolkit for communicating their work with precision and authority.
By the end of the retreat, they will have made tangible progress on their thesis or paper, gained new strategies for structuring and presenting their findings, and developed greater confidence and ease in their writing.
Sample Outline (mornings only)
Day 1: The Big Picture
The first day begins by stepping right back from the data to see your research as a
coherent journey with a clear direction of travel. Through guided exercises you’ll work
through the key moments in your research story, from the problem that motivated the
work to the significance of what you found. You will draft the kind of clear, direct
statements that are the foundation of a strong abstract.
You’ll use drawing exercises to address the challenges of shaping a literature review,
before reflecting critically on the literature and positioning your own work clearly
throughout, ensuring that you do not lose your voice in a catalogue of what others have
said. Finally, we’ll look at what makes a strong title, and you’ll have an opportunity to share
feedback with each other.
Day 2: Voice and Your Reader
Voice in this context means the presence of a guiding, directing intelligence on the page: a writer who draws their reader’s attention to the important points, interprets the results, and explains why the data matters. You’ll help your reader navigate your argument rather than leaving them to work it out for themselves.
We look at how voice operates at the level of the paragraph, and in particular in the role of the topic sentence. We introduce ‘reverse outlining’ as a diagnostic technique you can apply to your own work. And we’ll introduce you to ‘connective tissue’, the linking phrases and signposting moves that guide readers between ideas.
Day 3: Methods and Results: Guiding the Reader Through Your Work
The Methods and Results sections are often written in ways that are easy to produce but difficult to read. We discuss how to organise Methods sections around the reader's understanding rather than your own experience, drawing on close reading of published papers to examine what science writers actually do.
In the Results section, you’ll reflect on how best to organise your results and then step onto the page to interpret the data and guide the reader through your findings.
Day 4: The Ladder of Abstraction
We introduce the ‘ladder of abstraction’, a concept that helps researchers move back and forth between abstract ideas and concrete examples, in order to connect with and engage their readers. We look at techniques for opening a piece of writing in a way that draws readers in and makes the significance of your work immediately apparent.
We’ll introduce metaphor and the Harvard's Question Formulation Technique as a way to think through obstacles.
Day 5: Discussions and Conclusions
We begin by looking outward from the thesis to think about the significance and impact of your research beyond your immediate specialism. We look at how to summarise findings clearly for readers who may not have read the results closely, how to interpret findings rather than merely restate them, how to address limitations without undermining your conclusions, and how to speculate responsibly.
We also explore how the Discussion connects back to the Introduction: the best discussions answer the question posed at the start, and make explicit what has changed in our understanding as a result of the research. You’ll draft a powerful final sentence.
Finally, we turn to the writing process itself. We’ll share writing habits that allow space for insights to arise, and strategies for staying motivated and getting unstuck.