Retreats for Supervisors

Even the most able students can produce writing that is difficult to follow. Or they struggle to organize their thoughts or clarify their contribution. Perhaps they have fallen out of love with their research project…How can we help these students to help themselves – and each other?

In this five-day retreat for supervisors and writing support staff, we share our tried-and-tested approaches to helping students think deeply and laterally about their research, communicate their ideas with confidence and rigour, and stay motivated and productive over the long term.

“Of course it’s a given that you need the proper space and time to write – but without focus on content and narrative craft we’d be churning out the same turgid stuff, just more efficiently… The week vastly exceeded my expectations and I think will have a profound effect on my writing.”

(Research Fellow, LSE)

True North Retreats for Supervisors

What makes this training different from the way we work with students is that it will also help you to reflect on your teaching as well as your own writing practice. During the five days you’re with us, you’ll hone, deepen and perhaps rediscover the skills you already possess as an academic writer. We encourage you to come with work-in-progress that you wish to develop further, and use it to explore ‘voice’, and ‘story’, and get to grips with structure – including how to unfold argument as the engine of a paper or academic book. All of this know-how refines your own writing, but it will also help you identify new approaches to supporting the students under your guidance.

This retreat is not about how many words you can get the page, but it is immersive. You’ll be away from your usual commitments, living and working with your peers and getting as much value from that as from anything we do or say. People often tell us that as the result of the immersive nature of our retreats, something happens to the way they can focus on their work; staying with it, dwelling with it really does make the difference.

Over the course of five days, we’ll draw from our own experience as professional writers and as trainers to share well-tried and tested approaches to help you think deeply and laterally about your research, communicate your ideas with confidence and rigour, and stay motivated and productive over the long term. In the mornings, you’ll attend a group session led by us, and in the afternoons we’ll hold 2:1 surgeries (both of us, one of you) to focus specifically on your work-in-progress. We’ll also create discussion groups to reflect and feed back on the morning sessions, inflecting them outwards, towards teaching.

By the end of the retreat you will have learned:

How to help students find direction and focus.
Practical techniques for reading, note-taking and drafting that help students overcome procrastination and perfectionism.
New ways to help students find their academic writing ‘voice’ in order to write with clarity and authority.
Exercises to help students discover the story of their research and articulate their original contribution.
Creative and critical thinking exercises to help students recognize new connections and relationships within and beyond their research material.
Ways to help students stay motivated and support each other.

Components of this retreat can also be delivered as shorter in-person or online workshops.