Getting together to overcome research loneliness in two Argentinian virtual writing groups

MARÍA PAULA ESPECHE; LAURA COLOMBO

Londres

Conferencia; Researcher Education and Development Scholarship Conference; 2022

University of Leeds

Feelings of loneliness are unfortunately common in doctoral studies and they can be one of the reasons for students dropping out of their programs, thus increasing the possibilities of losing talent in research careers. Among the different initiatives aimed at improving research trajectories and widen participation in research, virtual writing groups (VWGs) have been found to offer social support to researchers.These groups can be characterized according to the activities carried out during the meetings as concurrent or response VWGs. In the former participants gather to review each other's drafts and in the latter members meet and write together, not necessarily sharing their texts. Both types of VWGs are incipient in Latin American universities. Our study reports on participants´ perspectives on the role that VWGs can play to cope with feelings of loneliness. The thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with graduate students from different Latin American countries shows that both concurrent and response VWGs provide access to support networks that lessen the impact of loneliness on research careers. These findings evidence how initiatives based on peer collaboration not only can provide a buffer to cope with loneliness feelings but also lead to less individualistic and more pleasurable ways of facing the academic work, thus avoiding losing talent in research careers. Despite the limited scope of our study, we hope our findings can inform future initiatives as well as contribute to our knowledge on how to better support academic careers.