Twice a year, we take ourselves away on a 4-day residential writing retreat (so far, Wisemans Ferry and Canberra have been our locations of choice).

Based on the Women Writing Away model developed by Barbara Grant at The University of Auckland, our retreat is for HDR students and supervisors who are researching in the field of Higher Education. The Higher Education focus is important because it offers just the right amount of commonality so that everyone (supervisors too) can take away new conceptual goodies to push their own research along.

The retreats are intended to be intimate - no more than 10 people - and focused. Participants are asked to commit to a set of writing goals before they go on retreat and to prepare themselves as best they can beforehand so that their energies are focused on writing. It is structured mainly around individual writing time, with optional activities (for new researchers), critical friendship and fellowship, a slow reading aloud session, and a compulsory work-in-progress session (for all researchers).

The aim is to support HE researchers to reconnect with their writing lives and to provide structure, nourishment, stimulation and a collegial context for them to do so.