The IMISCOE PhD Training Committee hosted the second session for the new PhD Academy cohort on 4 December 2025, which also served as their first interactive workshop. The two-hour session brought together doctoral researchers from the IMISCOE PhD Academy for a lively and reflective exchange, with the dual aim of mapping the many stages of the PhD journey and fostering a sense of closeness within the cohort by creating space for participants to get to know one another and each other’s research more deeply.
Titled The Rebel’s Guide to PhD Life, the workshop combined research-informed insights, personal stories and observations, and collective reflection. Rather than offering prescriptive advice, the session invited participants to critically engage with the conditions shaping doctoral life and to reflect on how they wish to navigate them. The themes addressed included motivations for pursuing a PhD; the institutional structures and power relations that frame academic work; collaboration and co-creation with supervisors and peers; time management and priority setting; nurturing creativity and joy; navigating academic ‘rules of the game’ while remaining true to one’s values; writing in the age of AI; dealing with failure, rejection, and disagreement; sustaining health and well-being; and imagining the usefulness of a PhD beyond academia.
Nilay Kılınç prepared the workshop materials and led the presentation, grounding each theme in existing research. This included, for example, what empirical studies reveal about doctoral experiences, what psychological research suggests about creativity, hobbies and well-being, and how emerging scholarship addresses the role of AI in academic writing. Across 48 slides, the presentation also introduced practical tools and resources that may support PhD researchers in their everyday work, such as time-management and organisational apps, short videos for stretching and eye exercises, as well as an annotated list of 25 academic references intended as introductory reading. These materials were shared with participants after the session as a resource they can return to throughout their PhD.
Each thematic block was accompanied by a facilitated discussion led by Nomkhosi Mbatha, who guided participants through a series of creative and open-ended questions designed to prompt reflexivity and peer exchange. Participants were invited to reflect on questions such as how their interest and passion for their topic developed, why their research matters to them personally, when and why time management becomes challenging, and what practices or tools they use to cultivate creativity in their everyday lives. These discussions created an atmosphere of openness, allowing participants to share experiences that are often left unspoken in more formal training settings.
The idea of the ‘rebel’ was invoked quite deliberately, and very much in a constructive spirit. Rebellion, in this sense, was not about railing against, but about taking the time to stop and think: to understand how the system works, what its rules and constraints are, and then to decide consciously how one wishes to operate within them. It is about knowing where you stand, what you care about, and what sort of scholar you want to become.
Set against a PhD landscape that is shifting rapidly, and in which early enthusiasm can all too easily collide with pressure, uncertainty and self-doubt, the workshop offered a space to reflect together and take a step towards ‘know thyself’. In doing so, it encouraged doctoral researchers to take proper ownership of their PhD journeys, combining an honest sense of self with a clear-eyed, strategic understanding of the academic world they are navigating.