PhD course: Conducting Literature Reviews
Course responsible and lecturer
Richard Herriott, Associate Professor, PhD. Lab for Social Design, Design School Kolding
October 28th-29th, 2021. Both days 09.00-16.00
Design School Kolding, Aagade 10, 6000 Kolding
Max number of students: 12
2 ECTS
Deadline for registration: October 17th, 2021.
Registration to Christina Stind Rosendahl at csr@dskd.dk.
PROGRAM
Day 1
09.00-10.00: Introduction.
10.00-12.00: Literature Review Lecture 1. An overview of literature review aims and methods and the relation to the research question. (Break for coffee at 11.00)
12.00-13.00: Lunch
13.00-15.00: Workshop 1 introduction. The workshop is designed to guide PhD students to placing the literature review in relation to the rest of their PhD project. During this the lecturer will discuss 1:1 the student´s work (Break for coffee at 14.00).
1500-1600: Review: students present their findings which is the expected main themes of the
literature review and the implications for the research question. Plenum discussion.
Day 2
09.00-09.15: Introduction
09.15-11.00: Lecture 2. Examples of literature reviews in the arts and humanities.
11.00-12.00: Workshop. Reading and discussing sample material from reading list (from the lecture)
12.00-13.00: Lunch.
13.00-14.00: Lecture 3. Organising the literature review material, from a reticular structure to a dendritic structure (mind-map to table of contents). Approaches to data organisation. (Coffe at 14.00)
14.00 -15.00: Workshop. Applying ideas to your literature list: PhD with paper, scissors and glue. Students need to bring a print out of their literature list (on paper).
15.00-16.00: Discussion and wrap up. Selected cases are discussed with the class. The product is a mind-map and tentative TOC-style list of articles.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course introduces PhD students to the problem of the literature review. Seen by
many as essential to the positioning of the PhD, the literature review must be
correctly constructed so as to a) outline the state of the art in the field and
b) lead up to the formulation of the research question. The literature review
requires the student must handle a large amount of data and also address the
nature of its content. This presents a number of challenges to do with the
structuring of knowledge but also to take a creative approach so that it is
more than a digest of articles and books. The process is also one requiring an
agile approach to information and theory since the lengthy immersion in the
literature will doubtless challenge some of the assumptions upon which the PhD
application is based. Students therefore need to take a critical approach
not only to the new material they encounter but also to their own initial work.
Benefits of a good literature review are that it adds to the final output of the
PhD, helps formulate the research question and can be the basis of a
peer-reviewed publication.
Please prepare an up-to-date copy of your literature list for the course.
