Beyond the Advice Manual: A Cavellian Philosophy of Doctoral Writing
Áine Mahon (University College Dublin)

In person and on Zoom

This paper draws on the work of Stanley Cavell to explore doctoral writing as a philosophical terrain shaped by messiness, non-linearity, and profound transformation. It engages with core philosophical questions underpinning doctoral work: What is writing? How does it relate to reading? How much of ourselves do we invest in this process, and how are we changed along the way? Engaging with recent work on Doctoral Education, I aim to offer a philosophically nuanced account of what it means to write the PhD, interrogating how voice and identity emerge within the ‘messy entanglement’ (Nuriler & Bengtsen, 2024) of doctoral becoming.

Áine Mahon is Associate Professor in Philosophy of Education at University College Dublin. Her first monograph, The Ironist and the Romantic: Reading Richard Rorty and Stanley Cavell, was published by Bloomsbury in 2014. She has edited or co-edited three collections of scholarly essays: The Promise of the University: Reclaiming Humanity, Humility, and Hope (Singapore: Springer, 2021); Philosophical Perspectives on Contemporary Ireland (London: Routledge, 2019); and Stanley Cavell, Literature and Film: The Idea of America (London: Routledge, 2013). Her next monograph, The Intentional PhD: From Misery to Meaning It, will be published by Manchester University Press in 2027.