CERI’s Writing Seminar

This seminar provides a space for exchange and discussion around writing in the social sciences. It offers support to CERI doctoral students in the development of their various written productions (thesis chapters, articles to be submitted to journals, dissemination of research to a wider public, etc.).

It is meant to share techniques, “recipes” and other “tricks of the trade” while (re)giving doctoral students the taste and pleasure of writing, which is an integral part of the research process. This seminar is also intended to be a place of professional socialization because formulating (and receiving) critical and reasoned feedback on texts is a central activity of academia.

The seminar has four components, each of which addresses the issue of writing in its own way.

- Thematic workshops open to all, which consist of collective sessions around writing, publication in journals (French and English), the architecture of research texts, the development of the thesis outline, the use of images, etc.

- Text discussion workshops, i.e. working sessions in small groups: the doctoral students who participate share in advance an advanced draft of a chapter or article which they submit to the (benevolent) gaze of their peers. Each text is discussed by a doctoral student and a researcher. The focus is not so much on the content of the research as on the presentation of evidence, the structure, the style and the argumentative process.

- A writing residency organized for doctoral students and by doctoral students, which consists of a stay “hors les murs” of several days for a group of around ten people, in order to benefit from unfragmented writing time and sustained peer-to-peer exchanges

- Weekly ‘Shut up and write!’ sessions organized by Chiara Ruffa, i.e. moments of writing in silence during which CERI members meet in a room to work on their respective writing projects, in 45-minute sessions, interspersed with breaks. These collective times promote the discipline of writing and facilitate exchange.