Doctoral School has the pleasure to invite those interested to the lecture 'From Conception to Birth: How to plan, draft, write and finish a PhD thesis' by visiting professor Rico Isaacs on Wednesday, 12 October.
In this talk, Professor Isaacs will give an overview of his personal PhD journey and the key lessons learnt in terms of navigating and successfully completing a PhD thesis. While the talk will be channeled through his experience, it aims to explore issues of what it means to 'become an author' in the PhD process, how to envision the thesis as a 'whole' integrated piece and how to structure and organise the work. He will also discuss the challenges of methodology, fieldwork, data analysis, managing the writing process and finishing and preparing for the oral defense.
Finally, Professor Isaacs will discuss the process and options of re-working the thesis for peer reviewed journal papers and for publishing the work as a book.
About the lecturer
Rico Isaacs is a Professor of International Politics at the University of Lincoln in the UK. His research interests lay at the intersection of authoritarianism, nationalism and populism with a specific focus on the post-communist space, especially Central Asia. Specifically, his research concerns three areas: the formal and informal institutional basis of support for authoritarian rule; the construction and contestation of nation-building policies and discourses; and the relationship between populism and ecological crisis. He is the author Political Opposition in Authoritarianism (Palgrave 2022), Film and Identity in Kazakhstan (Bloomsbury 2018) and Party System Formation in Kazakhstan: Between Formal and Informal Politics (Routledge 2011), as well as authoring several edited volumes, an introduction to Politics textbook and many journal articles.
He is also currently serving as editor of the leading peer-reviewed journal within the field of Central Asian Studies, Central Asian Survey. Professor Isaacs has been awarded funding for his research from the British Academy, the European Union, the British Council and the Leverhulme Trust among others. He is often invited to give public lectures, provide comment to the media and offer consultancy services for private and research institutes working on the Central Asian region.
