Making sense of complexity: an autoethnography of humanities doctoral writing

Purpose Scholarship highlights doctoral writing as a site of intense personal struggle, which is hard to articulate and inadequately supported. This study aims to make visible this pedagogical challenge by exploring the micro level of one example through autoethnography. This reveals the idiosyncratic complexity that shapes doctoral writing, where subjectivity, individual circumstance, research topic and contingent external influences entangle. As a humanities example, this offers insights into doctoral writing experiences in this field. Design/methodology/approach This autoethnography combines evocative vignettes narrating autobiographical experience with scholarly analysis. This approach encourages readers to connect themselves to the example. Analysis explores the example’s significance by comparing it to scholarship about the affective intensity of doctoral writing and the humanities. Findings Doctoral writers face a huge challenge: undertaking text and identity work simultaneously while negotiating conflicting messages about how they should write. This causes confusion and disempowerment. This autoethnography finds that experimenting with self-reflective and creative writing supports doctoral scholars to make sense of this. Research limitations/implications This autoethnography centres a White, British, humanities experience. This limitation is somewhat mitigated by critically reflecting on the Northern/Western knowledge that this position represents. Yet the myriad experiences of doctoral writing extend far beyond this paper. It argues that doctoral writers must reflect deeply to make sense of their complex experiences, and that further work is especially needed to support this in the humanities. Originality/value Doctoral writing poses a pedagogical challenge because it is a highly individualised and largely hidden process. This paper contributes to making this visible by exploring one individual experience.