“Oh, the places you’ll go!” Reflecting on my PhD journey

Starting out

Nearing the end of my undergraduate study, I was working on a small research essay and was having some trouble figuring out the direction it should take. It was in a unit on refugee law, which I was very interested in, but couldn’t quite decide what the essay should focus on. Then, by chance, I came across some articles that looked at communication and language-related challenges in refugee visa application processes.

And that was it: I was hooked. The process of preparing and writing that essay was so engaging that I knew I just had to stay doing this kind of thing. I was determined to become a researcher, and I even had an idea of what type of research I’d like to do.

Following the great experience I had on that essay and finishing up my law degree, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to work on a ground-breaking research project for the next three years, with Professors Mary Crock, Ben Saul and Ron McCallum, at Sydney Law School. With these three professors, I acquired so many new skills crucial to young academics: preparing and amending a large ethics application; organizing and then actually conducting international fieldwork across three different continents; writing journal articles and book chapters; presenting at the UN; and, finally, publishing a book!

During the three years I worked on the project full time, I also managed to fit in a Master of Applied Linguistics and practical legal training to be admitted as a solicitor.

I had managed to continue pursuing my interest in refugee application processes during my Master and when I was looking into my next steps, knew I’d found my dream supervisor when I met Professor Ingrid Piller. So as I wrapped up my work at Sydney Law School and received my offer of a place and scholarship for a PhD at Macquarie University’s Linguistics Department, I felt like I had a decent chance at everything coming together okay.

Navigating hurdles

Yet, the next four years held plenty of difficulties. They began almost immediately, in the form of data collection challenges. I wanted to continue my focus on asylum interviews and therefore wanted to get a hold of audio data from immigration interviews or appeals. Staying within ethical constraints for participant recruitment this proved near impossible, even with the help of some very supportive practitioners. Effectively it meant greatly redesigning my research, more or less on the go.

I also faced other challenges in the form of recurring health-related issues that were both physically and mentally draining and also entailed sometimes frustrating experiences navigating university bureaucracy. Finally, about half-way into my candidature, I took on another (more than?) full-time role when I became a parent for the first time.

These events and issues all created potential roadblocks that challenged the way I approached my work. This has made me reflect on what made the PhD a successful and positive experience for me, despite these challenges.

Support and guidance

I believe that the most important factor in surviving and thriving in the PhD was having great support networks and guidance. Professor Piller’s development of regular reading groups and other activities for her (past, present and sometimes future) PhD candidates not only creates structure and shares knowledge to help them complete their candidature successfully. It also helps establish a social network of peers who are able to offer support to each other in everything from sharing useful research and navigating bureaucracy to offering a hug and reassurance when it’s needed. I had recently graduated mentors I could look to for guidance and motivation, and in turn I could reinforce my own learning and leadership skills by assisting those junior to me.

Follow your passion, flexibly

Doing a PhD is not a small undertaking. What really helped me keep going is that I was researching in an area and regarding a topic that I am truly passionate about. I love reading, writing, thinking and talking about my topic and sociolinguistics more generally, and this keeps me motivated and engaged even when things aren’t always going the way I planned.

At the same time, the many challenges that can crop up mean that it’s important to keep an open mind and be flexible. While I was able to keep focusing on the research questions that interested me, with support and guidance, I adjusted my approach to overcome some of the initial issues I had with my data collection. In the end, this led me to do something completely new, focusing on credibility as a central issue: something which apparently had never before been done in a sociolinguistic study on asylum procedures. I was also able to expand my focus and include media and political discourse.

My parental responsibilities led to a pretty large change in my lifestyle, and being flexible about the hours and location for my work (with the support of equally flexible and open-minded supervisors and employers) meant that I could find the new best fit for my day-to-day research and writing, and remain productive and ultimately meet my deadlines.

Do what works for you

Beyond choosing where and when to work, deciding how to structure and write my thesis was influenced by what I felt would work best for me and my project. I opted to do my PhD “by publication”. This involves preparing a number of academic papers, which more or less constitute the chapters of your thesis when you put it all together at the end. I felt drawn towards this option as I had already had experience writing journal articles in my role as a research assistant. I felt comfortable and familiar with the process of submitting articles and having them reviewed. It also meant that I had smaller targets, rather than being concerned with a mammoth thesis looming at the end of three years. It was reassuring in that it created extra opportunities to seek expert feedback on my writing and research. Finally, thinking beyond the PhD, it allowed me to publish: an ever-important activity for anyone aspiring to a career in academia.  All four papers from my thesis have now been published or are about to be published – papers one and two about half-way through my candidature, and three and four were accepted just after my thesis examination, and will come out shortly.

Preparing for life beyond the PhD

My PhD was definitely a well-rounded journey. The various challenges and experiences I had have encouraged me to think of the PhD a little differently to how I did when I started. It’s quite easy to get caught up in being concerned about achievement. Yes, PhD candidature does have certain requirements that need to be fulfilled: you need to conduct research and ultimately produce a final product, usually in the form of a written thesis. But the PhD is not a big test, and as junior researchers we are not expected to know everything and be able to do it all. In fact, the PhD is about creating the opportunity for us to learn how to become researchers. The ups and downs, responding to challenges, seeking support, assisting others, reading, writing, navigating bureaucracy, all these are part of our learning. When all this works well and we successfully complete our PhD, we are still not all-knowing researchers. However, the experience will hopefully mean that we emerge better equipped to walk out into the world (whether academic or elsewhere) and navigate the challenges and opportunities that await us.

Related content

• The triumph of completing a PhD
• Why do female academics publish less than their male peers?
• Strange academic women
• Forgotten and invisible? The legal protection of refugees with disabilities
• Are we all different in the same way?
• Telling stories? Credibility in asylum interviews
• Crucial communication: language management in Australian asylum interviews
• Don’t know what “jurisdictional error” means? Some people’s future depends on it
• Discrimination by any other name: language tests and racist migration policy in Australia
• We all have a culture, we all speak a language: the Australian legal system discusses diversity

References

Crock, M., Smith-Khan, L., McCallum, R., & Saul, B. (2017). The Legal Protection of Refugees with Disabilities: Forgotten and Invisible? Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.
Smith-Khan, L. (2017a). Different in the Same Way? Language, Diversity, and Refugee Credibility. International Journal of Refugee Law, 29(3), 389-416.
Smith-Khan, L. (2017b). Negotiating narratives, accessing asylum: Evaluating language policy as multi-level practice, beliefs and management. Multilingua, 36(1), 31-57.
Smith-Khan, L. (2017c). Telling stories: Credibility and the representation of social actors in Australian asylum appeals. Discourse & Society, 28(5), 512-534.
Smith-Khan, L. (2018). Contesting credibility in Australian refugee visa decision making and public discourse. (PhD), Macquarie University. Available through our PhD Hall of Fame or directly here.
Smith-Khan, L. (in press, a). Communicative resources and credibility in public discourse on refugees. Language in Society.
Smith-Khan, L. (in press, b). Debating credibility: Refugees and rape in the media. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics.