Abasi Kiyimba's Key Note Speech: "Writing to grow after Writing to graduate" addressed the challenges of writing that may occur after the PhD honeymoon phase.
- Even though they have just proven being able to collect a large corpus of data in an organized way and being qualified to bring forth a publication about that, many young scholars tend to abstain from writing, he said, because they are burdened with teaching, course-related work and exams, or spend large amounts of time in university committees and admission meetings. Nevertheless, Kiyimba asserted, they should participate in the production of knowledge beyond the classroom. Knowing the many demands on their time that scholars are facing, how can this be enabled?
Professor Kiyimba first emphasized the many strengths that scholars at that stage have. He sees strong analysis and problem solving skills, explained how the writing process has necessitated the ability to form and defend independent conclusions, to have developed organizing principles, and gauged the fellows capable to understand and synthesize data, as well as to design and analyse surveys. Apart from that they also have interpersonal and leadership skills (as writing a PhD is also "an exercise in PR", as he put it): post-doctoral scholars have been able to convince their supervisors both on a personal level and on the level of writing, they learned to respond to positive and negative feedback, they are supervising their own students in evaluations and reports, are managing funds for prolonged periods of time, are teaching concepts to others, etc. Therefore, Kiyimba stated, concerning self-management and habits a scholar with PhD already proved a lot of dedication and discipline, both of which he or she can resort to as a ressource for further research projects.
Kiyimba estimated that every PhD thesis can yield at least 3-5 academic articles, e.g. in form of published (and polished) chapters of the thesis. Additionally, there is usually a lot of undigested data which had to be left out of the thesis for reasons of conciseness and clarity, or unexplored areas which have been outside the main line of the argument. Therefore, young scholars usually have a corpus of unpublished data available in which to dig for publications might be rewarding, he suggests.
Usually, the first attempts in academic writing (seminar papers, classroom and homework essays, Bachelor or Master Thesis, and even the PhD Thesis) have been rather writer-centred. As students no one has to bother about the reader, since the supervisor has to read that paper (Kiyimba coined the term “captive audience”). Students may tend to write for display, to show their knowledge, to convince their supervisor to give them a good grade. Writing at a later stage of the academic career though requires a reader-centred approach: you have to persuade the reader to read your text! You have to make your significance clear. It is required and assumed that you have a grasp on the topic and on your writing as well, otherwise no peer-reviewed journal will publish the text.
Professor Kiyimba shared his huge experience from decades of writing in the academia. From strategies against writer’s block (“write: ‘I can’t write’”) to different writing techniques (pre-writing, rewriting, social writing), from how to deal with disappointments (“try again at another journal”) to being careful with style sheets, word limitations and claims for authority, he supplied a wide array of ideas and inspirational clues.
This speech was eagerly followed by the audience, because it revealed the immense passion that Professor Kiyimba has for writing, and was well presented with humour and understanding. Not least it vividly wrapped up what Professor Kiguli had tought the group the day before.
