Welcome the New year, and welcome back to my blog!

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the blog at the start of a new year, 2017! It appears that you’ve all recovered from eating far too much turkey (insert vegetarian alternative) and consumed far too much cola (as if) so you can get down to the serious nitty gritty of understanding what I am going to be talking about so if anyone can work out what it is I am saying during the year, do let me know!

The year is shaping up to be the busiest year yet for the Ph.D. with the key tasks of the year being the formal drafting of early draft thesis chapters namely the background, literature review and methodology chapters, and also contribute significantly towards the development of the theoretical framework, which shall be the main output of this research. There are going to be various opportunities during the year such as attending research conferences and also writing conference papers as well as research papers, as well as taking part in various courses that shall help improve my skills and myself as a professional in general. It’s a bit too early to begin writing research papers so I predict that around half of the year will be spent working on the theoretical framework as well as drafting the thesis chapters. Opportunities for conference papers will come in the summertime and probably around autumn time I shall be ready to formally approach research journals to ask if they would be interested in a paper idea of mine at the time, more than likely based on an emerging theoretical framework but not sure if this is actually possible. Either way, I shall be searching for many opportunities to get myself published beyond the blogosphere.

Speaking of the blog, what’s the aim of this blog for the next year?

For the past couple of years, I have been writing primarily about the development of the research design and longer term readers shall probably remember the many changes this design went through before being settled on a research design. That’s the way research projects work! Now that I am much more settled on a research design (still some specifics to work through but in general it’s in place) and the general phenomenon of interest, assuming that everything is alright with the design I am changing the purpose of the blog. I want to engage more at the philosophical level because I am developing a substantial and deeper fascination with philosophy particularly in relation to research design. Therefore, discussions are going to be shifting more towards general methodological and philosophical discussions but still keep these grounded in the context of my own research. What I mean by this is, discuss different philosophical theories and perspectives and engage with debates and discussions about methodologies in the context of my own research design e.g, realism, case study and grounded theory, but also where appropriate and necessary discuss other philosophical and methodological approaches. The idea is to now slowly and carefully build philosophical justifications for the research design, and contribute towards existing debates and discussions. Obviously not everything will be discussed on this blog as a lot of ideas to come will probably be kept for research papers and the thesis, but anything I feel is appropriate and general for this blog I shall put it up on here. I will still be writing weekly or fortnightly posts keeping you all up to date with progress and shall be writing on here about my engagement with theory development, data management, thesis chapter structure and writing, and perhaps discuss specific research papers but primarily the focus is going to shift more towards philosophy of research designs. The overall aim of the blog is still to chart and track my thinking, through processes, and development of these.

It’s going to be a challenging and exciting year with potentially lots of opportunities and possibilities, and I will keep those interested up to date through this blog!

Welcome to the New Year, and welcome back to my academic blog!

Alex Darracott : 13 Jan 2017 18:20 |  Tags: Planning Reflections |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem