Abstract
Not all researchers begin their doctoral journeys from a position of physical, spiritual and emotional stability. This chapter provides an evocative autoethnographic account of the author’s traumatic lived experience, and of the impact that it had on her decision to begin a Doctorate of Philosophy. She offers this storytelling as a means of expanding the knowledge base around the much underrated sensitivities of the research practitioner. This position of insider knowledge enables her to present the lessons learnt from her journey as a series of strategies that may help others to engage with the risk for the researcher associated with experiencing the pressures involved in the multifaceted effects of ongoing traumatic loss, coupled with the pressures of producing a valuable and rigorous body of scholarship.
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Mulligan, D.L. (2021). The Risky Responsibility of Doctoral Writing as Grief Work: Lessons Learnt Whilst Journeying with Trauma in Australia. In: Mulligan, D.L., Danaher, P.A. (eds) Researchers at Risk. Palgrave Studies in Education Research Methods. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53857-6_6
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