Here at DiA we know that many people are too busy fighting the corona virus and dealing with the impact on their families to be able to spend much time reading our blogs. We also know that many of academic supervisors and teachers are struggling to respond to emails because they are at home looking after their children.
We have been trying to help in the battle against the virus in small ways by donating to good causes and delivering food with those who are isolated, but we realised a few days ago that there is something else we can do. Although academia is far from the worst hit sector, with nurses and doctors risking their lives on a daily basis, the inability to make progress has made many students and early career researchers anxious.
Our first message to these colleagues is please don’t worry. Good mental health and survival is much more important than work. The last thing anyone should be worrying about right now is deadlines. Please remember that universities usually have a range of services that you can access, if you are feeling depressed or worried.
If you know that it would help you to be doing some work and you just need a bit of advice to help you resolve a particular issue or decide how to structure your paper, however, we would like to help.
For the duration of this crisis, we are offering students and early career researchers the opportunity to get feedback on a draft chapter or journal article. To make sure that we register and keep track of all submissions, we will be using ResearchGate. All you have to do to get feedback is go to ResearchGate, follow Prof Nic Cheeseman, upload your piece, and request feedback on it. We will receive an automatic notification and will get to it as soon as we can. See below for more details on how to do this.
Please keep in mind that we have limited knowledge and capacity, so please don’t submit for “extra” feedback – we are really trying to reach those who don’t have anyone else to talk to about their work. Our advice is only likely to be useful if you are working on comparative politics, democratization, elections, the politics of development, and African politics. Please also keep in mind that there is only so much time in the day – we will deal with pieces on a first come first served basis, and it may take us a while to get to yours.
Finally, a disclaimer: our advice is only our opinion. We will try to be as helpful and constructive as possible, but nothing we suggest should supersede or replace the advice given to you by your supervisors and advisors.
If any other academics would like to join us in offering feedback, please send us an email here – please do not use this email to send us submissions.
Thanks and see you on the other side.
Nic Cheeseman, Professor of Democracy, University of Birmingham
Obert Hodzi, Lecturer in Politics, University of Liverpool
How do I sign up for ResearchGate?
To start connecting and collaborating with researchers around the world:
- Go to www.researchgate.net
- Click Join for free or connect with Facebook or LinkedIn
- Select which type of researcher you are
- Enter your name, institutional email address, and choose a password
- To finish creating your account, you will need to click the link in the activation email you receive.
How do I request feedback for my publications?
To request feedback for one of your publications:
- Go to the publication you want feedback on by clicking on its title
- Click on the down arrow next to Share and select Request feedback
- Confirm by clicking on Request feedback
- Don’t forget that we will only see your request for feedback if you have first followed Prof Nic Cheeseman
