Understanding and solving intractable resource governance problems.
As most people who read my blog and have ever taken a course from me or attended one of my workshops (or even follow me on Twitter), I really love writing blog posts and Twitter threads that will help them in the future adopt my techniques. As most of the people who have read my […]
– July 16, 2021
A good friend of mine (Dr. Myriam Houssay-Holzschuch, Université Grenoble Alpes) recommended two books and my website for anyone starting graduate school (Dr. Houssay-Holzschuch is a human geographer). Since I’m half human geographer half political scientist, I immediately decided to follow her advice and buy the two books she recommended. One of them was “A […]
– June 20, 2021
This blog post has a terribly long blog post, but I think it’s worth including it in its entirety. I recently taught two workshops where I was asked about calendar management. Two years (and a metric tonne of international travel and fieldwork) later, I found myself over-exhausted. Part of it was that I was trying […]
– June 17, 2021
THREAD: on making your claim of novelty and contribution to the literature VERY clear with an example from Dr. Lisa Pinley Covert’s book. This blog post will be of interest to book writers, article and book chapter writers and thesis writers. Note how Pinley Covert makes her research question clear. Pinley Covert establishes that this […]
– April 29, 2021
This past week, I taught 2 workshops, 1 for the Association of Iberian and Latin American Studies of Australasia (AILASA) and another one (over 2 days) for Rutgers University Newark’s School of Graduate Studies. During both workshops, I got asked the same question about fighting “writer’s block” (“Professor Pacheco-Vega, how do you fight Writer’s Block, […]
– April 5, 2021
A lot of people use my blog posts as guides to literature reviews, either for themselves or for their students. A lot of people use my blog posts as guides to literature reviews, either for themselves or for their students. Questions like the ones posed in the quoted tweet are quite common. A few people […]
– March 22, 2021
This blog post focuses on using backcasting techniques and Overview Devices to revise the doctoral dissertation (chapter by chapter and/or the full draft). Applies to any thesis, for that matter. You can also extrapolate my strategy to revising a book manuscript as well (edited or solo author). Recently, a doctoral student asked me “Professor Pacheco-Vega, […]
– March 3, 2021
“You need to stay on top of the literature” This is such a common trope in academic life (just look at this Twitter search I did). I have uttered more times than I want to admit. It’s important to note that just about everyone who does scholarly work feels the same. It’s absurdly difficult to […]
– February 25, 2021
On the full-fledged process of responding to a Revise-And-Resubmit (R&R): I have written pieces that tackle specific components of the process, but I hadn’t actually written a thread or a blog post showcasing how all my blog posts fit with one another. I teach this process when I give workshops. So I figured I could […]
– February 13, 2021
I have written A LOT about various ways in which we can be kinder and gentler to our students, but I keep seeing op-eds and write ups on Those Higher Education outlets, and I am still thinking that there are things that need to be said. What I am writing about reflects MY experience and […]
– February 5, 2021
Two of my favourite scholars, Dr. Heather Smith and Dr. Eugene McCann (whom I have admired independently for a very long time, even before I became friends with both of them) recently asked me if I had some sort of easy-to-read-and-implement guide and/or template for undergraduate (pre-graduate school, post-grade 9, basically, baccaleaurate candidates) students. Because […]
– January 28, 2021
It’s been a rough year (2020) and 2021 promises to be just as difficult. I started the year exhausted and needed to ramp up to actually work normal hours. I strongly believe that we need kindness to others and to ourselves more than ever. The COVID19 global pandemic has created an extremely difficult situation for […]
– January 16, 2021
Those of you who know me well will remember that there are very few things I love more than developing syllabi. Despite the fact that I once thought writing up a syllabus was an inappropriate activity for a doctoral comprehensive exam (I have changed my mind over the last decade), I love syllabusing. I adore […]
– December 28, 2020
The Spring 2021 term is coming upon us quite fast, and I have wanted to write a thread on how to prepare for a graduate-level seminar. I know the range of difficulty of readings, amount/volume/number of pages assigned is going to vary, but I’ve been thinking about this issue for a very long time. Personally, […]
– December 26, 2020
This page links to the blog posts that I strongly believe will help readers outline their papers. The posts in this page focus on the specific types of outlines and how to develop them and expand into full manuscripts. Expanding Detailed Outlines into Memorandums and those into Full Manuscripts This post applies my Expansive Framework […]
– December 1, 2020
I have always considered myself a methodologist, and someone with a slight obsession with methods. I write about research methods here on my blog, I’ve edited a methods journal (International Journal of Qualitative Methods), I’ve published several scholarly pieces (book chapters and articles) on methods, and this fall, I taught several courses on research design, […]
– November 29, 2020
Anybody who follows me on Twitter or reads my blog knows that I have quite a healthy stock of stationery. I have always loved stationery and office supplies. I love taking notes by hand, and this reflects in my methods for note-taking, active reading and writing. Recently, a relatively new follower of my blog and […]
– November 28, 2020
As most of you all know, I’ve been teaching research methods, research design and academic writing for a while now. My students ALWAYS, literally ALWAYS ask me the question: “How do I go from having the Detailed Outline to actually writing a Memorandum (or a series of Memos) that I can then assemble into the […]
– November 13, 2020
I have news about online teaching and reading workload, friends. Me, teaching via Zoom. I have experimented with DRASTICALLY REDUCING the number of readings I assign for a class. This is sometimes perceived as hard in overview courses because you always feel like they should have “the lay of the land” and master all that […]
– October 11, 2020
If you’ve been reading my blog for a very long time you probably know that I have written quite a lot about syllabus-writing. I also have written about Dr. William Germano’s other books (“From Dissertation to Book”, and “Getting it Published”). I have corresponded with Professor Germano before, so he told me his next book […]
– October 11, 2020
I need to stay on top of several literatures and finish several papers, yet I have caved to the “I am too overwhelmed with teaching” reality. So in order to force myself to spend some time every morning catching up with the literature, I decided to launch yet another #AICCSED Reading, Annotating and Systematizing Challenge. […]
– September 1, 2020
Reviewing my students’ theses, and talking with them about their writing processes, they always tell me that they find crafting and constructing paragraphs very challenging. This is not unusual. Sentences and paragraphs form the core of our writing and each of them is, for many of us, beautiful and unique. Therefore, it is important that […]
– August 12, 2020
I already had written a blog post on writing a book review, but I have published a few that I am quite proud of, thus I thought I’d expand that blog post with a sequential, step-by-step description of my process. I need to finish 2 syllabi, so OBVIOUSLY I am going to write a Twitter […]
– August 8, 2020
Because I’ve been thinking about research all the time over the past few years (the mechanics and strategies of doing research, different methods to frame, design and answer a research question, how to effectively design a research project, etc.) I’ve also been wondering how can I craft a single, unified framework that can help writers […]
– August 7, 2020
Doctoral supervisors (and often, editors!) will ask you to create a conceptual, theoretical and/or analytical framework for your book, dissertation, chapter, or journal article. This is a good idea. I used to get confused by all the “framework”-associated terms, so I wrote THIS blog post: Writing theoretical frameworks, analytical frameworks and conceptual frameworks https://t.co/DeAqoV5xcQ This […]
– August 6, 2020
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