WP3 - Supporting PGR Writing – productivity, wellbeing and communities of practice

This poster will introduce and evaluate the first year of the Supporting PGR Writing project, funded by the University of Exeter Alumni Annual Fund.

The project aims to train and empower PGRs to set-up writing groups across the university. The format and benefits of structured writing groups with discussions and goal sharing are well documented (Murray and Newton 2009, Kamler and Thomson, 2014). Our approach at the University of Exeter was developed in collaboration with poet Dr. Sally Flint, and introduces creative writing tasks as a ‘warm-up’ to academic writing. These creative tasks are an opportunity to write without ‘failure’, and enhance the sense of community through a shared task.

The poster will outline our approach, how we have trained a network of facilitators, and report the initial findings about the impact of the work – with a particular focus on the link between productivity, wellbeing and communities of practice.