About

Research can be intense and often isolating. Most of what we write as postgrads is high stakes: thesis chapters, journal articles, funding applications. When writing only "counts" if it is assessed, it becomes easy to associate it with pressure rather than with thinking. Writing that supports learning and idea development without evaluation can be just as valuable (Elbow, 1997).

Writing is how you work out what you think. People who write regularly tend to do better academically (Bangert-Drowns et al., 2004), and in doctoral writing groups, students learn as much from reading and critiquing each other's work as from receiving feedback on their own (Aitchison, 2009).

Postgrads who write together also feel more like they belong in their research community (Lee and Boud, 2003). That helps, since postgraduate researchers report significantly higher levels of anxiety and depression than the general population (Evans et al., 2018). A blog won't fix structural problems in academia, but it can give people somewhere to think out loud with others going through the same thing.

The Ensemble Edit is a student-led space for low-pressure writing across disciplines. You might write about a seminar, a method you're trying, a conference, or just what postgrad life is actually like. Everything is reviewed before it goes on the site, but nothing is formally assessed. We want to bring together writers from AIMSIR, Decarb-AI, Co-Centre for Climate + Biodiversity + Water, the School of Maths, and anyone else who is interested.