Guiding doctoral writing: Making the process visible – experiences of the narrative inquirer

In this episode, our guest, Professor Sheila Trahar invites us to explore what narrative inquiry as an approach to knowledge creation and writing can teach us about the nourishing doctoral supervision practices and about writing itself. She offers crucial reminders about the importance of building a trusting, transparent supervisor-supervisee relationship; the relationship in which creativity is supported rather than constrained by academic conventions, deeply rooted assumptions, or individual insecurities. This conversation is particularly relevant in English as foreign language academic contexts, where finding one’s own voice often means thinking and writing in one’s second or third language. Join us as we hear about supervising experiences from such contexts and many other inspirations for (guiding) doctoral writing, including the imaginary conversation with Trinh Minh Ha…Sheila Trahar is Professor Emerita of International Higher Education at the University of Bristol.  The interdependent concepts of internationalisation of higher education and of social justice in higher education have long been the focus of her intellectual scholarship and her work is innovative for its use of narrative inquiry and autoethnography.    Latest  publications explore the relationship between internationalisation and decolonisation, including critiques of ‘whiteness’ in the Academy and the potential of Ubuntu to address racism in UK higher education.  A recent book chapter focuses on autoethnography as a methodology.   Sheila has supervised more than 50 doctoral researchers to successful conclusion, in the UK, Hong Kong, Finland and the USA.Sheila has participated in several research projects including one funded by the EU that focused on internationalisation of higher education in Israel and that involved Palestinian Arab and Israeli partners. More recently, she was a co-investigator on the ESRC/Newton Fund Southern African Rurality into Higher Education (SARiHE) project that investigated, with three South African universities, the transition of students from rural areas of South Africa into higher education. The collaboratively written SARiHE book Rural Transitions to Higher Education in South Africa: Decolonial Perspectives was published by Routledge in 2022.Despite being ‘retired’, Sheila worked  with colleagues in  the University of Bristol’s School of Electrical, Electronic and Mechanical Engineering from  2021 - 2024, exploring student learning experiences.  Her role was  to advise on and conduct qualitative research.  She is also involved with the University of Bristol CREATE programme, the programme that supports academic staff in their practice as educators and leaders, leading to Advance HE’s Fellowship awards  as a mentor and assessor and is a mentor in the Bristol Women’s Mentoring Network.   She is the External Examiner for the MA in International Higher Education at the University of Nottingham, Ningbo and a member  of the UKRI Peer Review College and the ESRC Assessor College.Sheila is an Associate Editor of Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) and was a co-editor of Compare from 2016 – 2022.