30th NISPAcee Annual Conference
"Crises, Vulnerability and Resilience in Public Administration"
June 2-4, 2022
Bucharest, Romania
PhD Pre-conference Seminar
Seminar coordinators:
Michiel S. de Vries, Institute for Management Research, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, [email protected]
Iwona Sobis, School of Public Administration, Gothenburg University, Sweden, [email protected]
– Report
The PhD Pre-conference Seminar: "How to Improve the Quality of your Research Paper?" in Bucharest took place on 1st Jun 2022. The seminar had two chairs, Michiel de Vries, from Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands and Iwona Sobis from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. The seminar was divided into three interactive sessions in which the following were discussed: (1) the role of the introduction and conclusion of the papers, (2) the role of the methodological chapter and its presentation, (3) the role of theory, its presentation in research, but also the different ways of its application in research.
In each session two PhD-students presented selected chapters of their articles and the chairs provided information, comments, and advice on how to improve specific parts of the article and how to organise papers to meet the international standards required for publication. This interactive approach allowed all participants in the pre-conference to discuss the respective chapters and debate the importance of empirical research for the everyday practice of public administration. The major aim of the pre-conference was to improve the structure of the PhD theses by performing an analysis of the differences between the papers, but also by pointing out the differences between papers based on empirical or theoretical research. The chairs informed how these differences should be reflected in the theses.
The pre-conference was a hybrid character, as five PhD-students physically attended and one PhD-student participated online. The pre-conference was well appreciated by all participants for the open discussions, the constructive criticism of the content of the papers combined with pragmatic solutions, pinpointing weaknesses of the texts and finding their strengths.