The RDP includes workshops on many different aspects of academic writing development to support you and help you develop the skills needed to write your thesis. Workshops include ‘Approaching the Thesis’, ‘Writing the Literature Review’, ‘Writing Methodologies’, and ‘Revising and Editing the Thesis’. If you have any other suggestions for workshops or resources on the subject of academic writing development not currently offered as part of the RDP, please do get in touch—we’d love to hear from you. 

See the current schedule.

 

We also run an annual ‘Thesis Boot Camp’, which is a weekend on campus dedicated to focused writing time and supporting each other to reach set writing goals. Details of Thesis Boot Camp are advertised via email and in the Researcher Newsletter in the second term.

 

Weekly ‘Get Stuff Done’ virtual writing sessions

Every Wednesday morning, 10:00­–12:00pm, Microsoft Teams.

Get Stuff Done is a weekly two-hour online session providing a friendly and constructive environment in which to meet like-minded peers, discuss writing or motivational challenges, and work in a focused way without distractions.

Find out more about these weekly virtual sessions.

 

1-1 Tutorials

We can provide individual advice on areas of academic writing development such as: chapter and sentence structure; critical analysis; the structure and writing of arguments, methodologies; methods and literature reviews; and anything else you’d like to discuss.

1-1 tutorials will be scheduled for an hour and will take place on Microsoft Teams. Each researcher may request up to four 1-1 tutorials per term. 

If you’d like to book a tutorial, please email Vicky Penn, our Researcher Development Officer, at Vicky.Penn@rhul.ac.uk. Please include your name, department, (working) thesis title, and the areas or issues you’d like to talk through. Vicky will then discuss your aims with you over email, set up a meeting, and ask you to send her a portion of your writing so that she can provide specific, detailed guidance and advice on areas to improve. Please send this in a Word document. An annotated copy of your work will be sent back to you before the tutorial, and Vicky will go through this with you, covering any recurring themes or issues.

This process is designed to help you understand how to improve your writing going forward, so the emphasis will be on building and developing academic writing skills rather than on proofreading.

 

RHUL Proofreading Scheme

The Royal Holloway Proofreading Scheme is open to PGRs who would like their final draft of an assessed project/dissertation/thesis to be checked for minor spelling and grammatical errors. The scheme's proofreaders do not work for Royal Holloway but are freelance professionals with experience of academic proofreading. Any work carried out by the Proofreading Scheme is by private arrangement and should be paid for by the PGR. Further information here.