Writing is a critical part of the academic endeavour but can also be very therapeutic, creative and enjoyable for everyone. We have started the CDAS Writing Initiative (CWI) to bring likeminded people together, scholars and all, to share and develop their writing, and to reflect on what you bring to the process as a writer.

Reflecting on writing and the self within writing, and academic work more broadly, is not new. It has a long tradition within in feminist studies, auto/biographical methods, and recognising the personal/professional intersection in academia more generally. For those who want to learn more about these bodies of work, and the work of the CWI team, we have put together this resources page of suggested reading. If you cannot access any of the academic papers please email Kate Woodthorpe at k.v.woodthorpe@bath.ac.uk to request a copy.

Suggested reading

Borgstrom, E. and Ellis, J. (2021) Internalising ‘sensitivity’: vulnerability, reflexivity and death research(ers), International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 24(5): 589-602.

Eakin, P. (1999) How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves, NY: Cornell University Press.

Letherby, G. (2002) Danger liaisons: Auto/biography in research and research writing, in Danger in the Field: ethics and risk in social research, G. Lee-Treweek and S. Linkogle (eds)

Michael-Fox, B. (2022)'Practising Creative and Autobiographical Writing: Writing, Death and the Self' in Borrowed Time: On Death, Dying and Change, Art.Earth available at https://art-earth.org.uk/shop/borrowed-time/

Moss, J. (2012) Writing in Bereavement

Norwood, T. (2021) Something Good Enough, The Lancet, 398(10318), 2305-2306

Phillips, R. and Kara, H. (2021) Creative Writing for Social Research: a practical guide (Bristol: Bristol University Press)

Reed, K. and Towers, L. (2021) Almost Confessional: managing emotions when research breaks your heart, Sociological Research Online

Ridgeway, A (2022) Love, loss and a doctorate: an autoethnography of grieving while writing a PhD, Higher Education Research and Development

Rosaldo, R. (2013) The Day of Shelly’s Death: the poetry and ethnography of grief, NC: Duke University Press

Thompson, K. (2011) Therapeutic Journal Writing

Tullis, J. (2017) ‘Death of an ex-spouse: lessons in family communication about disenfranchised grief’, Behavioral Sciences, 7(2): 16

Visser, R.C. (2017) ‘Doing death’: reflecting on the researcher’s subjectivity and emotions, Death Studies, 41 (1): 6-13

Woodthorpe, K. (2009) Reflecting on death: the emotionality of the research encounter, Mortality, 14(1) 70-86

Woodthorpe, K. (2011) Researching death: methodological reflections on the management of critical distance, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 14(2): 99-109.