Planning, Drafting, Polishing

During the summer semester of 2026, us PhD students at the IDK Philology had the opportunity to take part in a writing workshop. Here, we were able to learn about numerous tools and strategies for planning and writing academic texts. Depending on the PhD project, the workshop was offered in both English and German; the German-language session was led by Dr Anja Berninger.
The focus was on questions such as the following: What approaches are suitable for structuring a doctoral thesis? How does one focus the text towards the thesis statement? How does one ensure the best flow of reading in each paragraph, and how does it effectively stimulate the process of understanding?
However, the discussion covered not only immediate writing techniques, but also other aspects crucial to a successful doctoral thesis: structuring one’s own working time, extracting information from secondary literature, and dealing with writer’s block. In addition to providing new ideas, the event always offered an opportunity for reflection: individually, we were able to think through our own writing process and, as a group, exchange experiences, uncertainties and recommendations.
We would like to thank the organising team and Dr Anja Berninger for the entertaining and informative workshop!

Text: Jacob Ostermaier