Baillie Gifford Writing Partnership
The Baillie Gifford Writing Partnership Programme is a new initiative that builds on the success of previous and existing co-working opportunities in the Humanities Division. The aim of the Programme is to encourage and support productive, creative writing habits as a research-related skill and to facilitate new opportunities for peer mentoring. The programme coordinator connects Master’s, DPhil, and postdoctoral researchers by pairing up researchers for regular writing meet-ups. Matchings are made according to individuals’ preferences for timing, frequency, and location, as well as their research interests, career stage, and other peer-support or health-related priorities. Feedback from the first term’s cohort suggests that simply sharing one’s goals with someone else for timed, focused, quietly companionable writing sessions can make a significant difference to how reliably scholarly writing projects are completed, and how painless the writing process can be.
The programme’s characteristics are:
- Personalised and anonymised matching of writing partners, taking into account preferred writing environment, as well as preferred frequency and timing of meet-ups and other requests
- A termly ‘orientation session’ in which the aims, principles, and practicalities of writing partnerships are introduced and explored
- Access to resources to facilitate healthy writing habits, including writing tips and reading suggestions
- Optional writing breakfasts and bootcamps to instil healthy writing habits more intensively, in the company of other members of the Writing Partnerships community
- Encouragement of strategic planning, mutual accountability, and peer mentoring via the creation of a community in which writing is demystified and challenges and successes shared
For more information about the Writing Partnerships Programme or for interest in taking part please email or call Caroline Thurston, +44 (0) 1865 280566. caroline.thurston@humanities.ox.ac.uk.