Preliminary Material / Maureen Ryan -- Reflection 1: Researching Culture, Realising Self / Lynda Achren -- Reflection 2: Australia and September 11 / Ben Anwyl -- Reflection 3: Timely Intervention – Before It’s Too Hard / Denise Clarke -- Reflection 4: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime / Megan Evans -- Reflection 5: Through Music to Postgraduate Study / Sue Buchan -- Reflection 6: The Call to Individuation / Margi Gibb -- Reflection 7: Battles, Bed and the Ph.D. / Julie Gross McAdam -- Reflection 8: Living Knowledge to the Edge / Neil Hooley -- Reflection 9: Reframing My Landscape / Jennifer Kamp -- Reflection 10: Pamela Anderson, Durer and Herrenvolk / Loy Lichtman -- Reflection 11: A Precarious Path… with Heart / Sue Erica Smith -- Reflection 12: So You Think You Will Pursue a Ph.D. / Berise Heasly -- Reflection 13: Muted Voices / Tanya Paterson -- Reflection 14: Swimming with Piranha / Kerry Ryan -- Reflection 15: Life, Research and a Baby / Sarah Tartakover -- Reflection 16: Why I Became a Teacher Activist / Jo Williams -- Reflection 17: Voyages / Mark Brophy -- Reflection 18: There is Life after the Doctorate / Marg Malloch -- Reflection 19: Never Give In / Rose Mulraney -- Reflection 20: Learning to Become an Academic / Tracey Ollis -- Reflection 21: The Immortal Now / Flossie Peitsch -- Reflection 22: Releasing the Apsara / Petre Santry -- Afterword / Elaine Martin.

This book records the stories of doctoral study experiences of the twenty-two writers. These research degree experiences are embedded in the lives and careers of the writers and the twenty-two distinctive projects draw from those individual lives and careers. The authors write about meeting the continuing demands of older and younger family members and of their struggles with ill health and work place demands while working through their studies. There is also the joy of coming to see themselves and being seen as research scholars and supporting and celebrating with others as they move through candidature proposals and ethics applications to graduation. Apart from the stories that bring the writers to their particular projects and that colour their individual journeys, storying methodology is most often selected for the research, all of which is undertaken within the arts, humanities and education. Phenomenology, narrative, ethnography are central to most of the studies and the detailed accounts of each research topic, methods and outcomes locate each of the research projects in rich bodies of knowledge. Valued writers and readers in these fields, Mary Beattie and Elaine Martin have read each reflection and provided in turn a foreword and an afterword which bookend the volume and further enrich these reflections on learning, life and work.

Description based on print version record.