by Bill Sheate
Why a PhD peer support group?
Following Mental Health Awareness Week (week ending 31 May 2023), on 7 June I’m launching (and will facilitate) a new online PhD peer support group, open to any PhD/Doctoral student from any higher education institution.
The PhD/Doctoral Researcher Peer Support Group is open to any full or part-time student at any stage of a PhD/doctorate from any higher education institution and any discipline. It is aimed at addressing mental health and well-being issues, the sharing of PhD experiences, challenges at various stages of doctoral research, supervision problems etc. So may issues encountered by PhD/Doctoral research students are shared across disciplines and subjects, because doing a PhD is an unusual situation to find yourself in, as I’ve discussed before (see Rising to the mental health challenges of doing a PhD). Each meeting lasts 1.5 hrs every 2 months; attendance can be regular or occasional….. [Read more]
by Bill Sheate
In this, the fourth paper from her PhD, Ute Thiermann and I explore qualitatively how people with experience of mindfulness meditation understand how their own relationship with the environment, sustainability and society has been influenced by their mindfulness practice.
Thiermann, U.B., Sheate, W.R. How Does Mindfulness Affect Pro-environmental Behaviors? A Qualitative Analysis of the Mechanisms of Change in a Sample of Active Practitioners. Mindfulness (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-022-02004-4 (Open Access)
by Bill Sheate
New publication in Frontiers in Psychology…..
A third publication (open access) has recently emerged (December 2020) from the research of my PhD student Ute Thiermann [1]:
Thiermann Ute B., Sheate William R., Vercammen Ans (2020), Practice Matters: Pro-environmental Motivations and Diet-Related Impact Vary With Meditation Experience, Frontiers in Psychology, 11 , 35-77, https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.584353, DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2020.584353 [Read more]
by Bill Sheate
A new paper published….
Thiermann, U.B. and Sheate, W.R. (2020), The Way Forward in Mindfulness and Sustainability: a Critical Review and Research Agenda, Journal of Cognitive Enhancement, available online 2 July 2020
Following on from my last blog on this issue “Is there a link between mindfulness and sustainability” (22 April 2020), Ute Thiermann and I have published a further paper on this subject that reviews six leading theoretical links between mindfulness and sustainability that are backed by empirical evidence…… [Read more]
by Bill Sheate
Building good mental health while doing a PhD
Studying for a PhD can be demanding, challenging, sometimes exhilarating and sometimes deeply stressful. Starting out on a PhD is like no other academic study you will have done before. On the one hand you seem to have a long time ahead of you to get things done, and on the other milestones, deadlines and sometimes competing demands create pressures that you never faced as an undergraduate, on a Masters programme or even in an outside working environment……..
