A slide show from my writing course. Accompanies a post on patter patthomson.net published on Monday 30 November 2015

1. what literatures should I
read? how do I find them?
Pat Thomson
patthomson.net
@ThomsonPat

2. starting to accumulate the literatures
There are likely to be four major types of literatures that will be useful
to you:
(1) Literatures that address my topic
(2) Literatures that address an aspect of my topic
(3) Literatures that address topics like mine
(4) Literatures that help explain my topic

3. literatures that address my topic
• Are there any books or papers that have researched the same
question? Get them first.
then
• Generate some key questions about important aspects of your topic
that you will need to know about. Look for the papers and books that
may provide some answers to these questions. The next slide has an
example of how to do this.

4. Post PhD
employment
Facts and figures
about supply and
recruitment.
Disciplines? Locations?
Who wants to work in HE?
Potential applicants’ views
The changing
role of the academic
The alternatives to HE
employment
What are they? Who takes
them up?
Choice making- how do
people decide what to do?
What do universities
think needs doing
about employment?
Career advice?
Pathways?

5. Now think about the wider context for the question you are interested
in. What frames, what provides the context, for the question you are
interested in?
Higher
education
policy

6. Now think about the wider context for the question you are interested
in. What frames, what provides the context, for the question you are
interested in?
Higher
education
policy
Type and
location of
university
Public policy agendas
Labour market

7. Now think about the wider context for the question you are interested
in. What frames, what provides the context, for the question you are
interested in?
Higher
education
policy
Type and
location of
university
Public policy agendas
Labour market
Histories of the
production of
hierarchies of HE
Audit and funding regimes
Knowledge workers
and professions

8. What other studies might speak to your question?
There may be studies that address a topic that overlaps
with yours or that are like yours in some way.
Looking at some of this material can be helpful. It can
alert you to things that may be left out of those studies
that are on your question. Or it may have a different
and potentially generative take.
literatures that address topics like mine

9. Perhaps there are studies that also look at employment in this context –
potentially studies around employment trajectories into professions, or the
employment of particular disciplinary communities. They may not look at
PhD or postgraduates per se, but there is an overlap.
Public policy agendas
Labour market
Audit and funding regimes
Knowledge workers
and professions

10. literatures that offer theoretical explanations
• Some social theory is laid over the results after the research is done.
“This is what I found, now how can it be explained?”
• Other social theory shapes the way in which the research is
conducted.
• It is important to understand where you are going with theory
• Including this as an explicit part of your literatures work give you the
option of using theory in either way.

11. Now think again about these three types of literatures. What kinds of
explanations have they offered about their results? Are any of these
likely to be useful to you?
Think forward. How might the results of your research be explained?
What theoretical resources could you use to provide an explanation for
the ‘reality’ you ‘find’ in your research?

12. There are a range of social theories which address the context for postgraduate
employment as shown below – knowledge economy, globalisation, neoliberalism,
late modernity etc.
What do you now need to read for yourself and not just get second hand?
Public policy agendas
Labour market
Audit and funding regimes
Knowledge workers
and professions

13. And there is also a range of theories which position what individuals
(postgraduates in our example) choose to do within a wider context
There are studies either of postgraduate employment, or studies which
are like it, which use:
1. Bourdieu – field, capitals and habitus
2. Foucault – discourse and discursive assemblages
3. Socio-material analyses – the networked assemblages of actors and
actants
4. Reflexive modernisation – choice biographies and risk
5. Audit society, data and performativity
1-3 will shape the research design.

14. how to locate these various literatures?
• Start with the key words in your initial questions – postgraduate/PhD
employment, higher education policy, academic work.
• Use google scholar first of all. You can also try the major journal publishers
websites.
• Look to see if there are any meta-reviews, state of the art commentaries,
special issue of journals – these will give you the key references and some
of the debates.
• There are also now a lot of idiot guide types or ‘about’ books which will
give you a quick overview of the way that a topic can be explained, or what
a theorist has to offer.