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Update your browserOne of the best decisions I have made was to study overseas, primarily at The University of Hong Kong where I completed my PhD in Sociology but also through my research fellowship at The University of Vienna. Both of these opportunities were formative in terms of building my knowledge in the social sciences and developing my research skills. If postgraduate students or EMCRs get the opportunity to spend time overseas, I would strongly encourage them to take these. It extends your thinking beyond the Australian context, facilitates the building of long-lasting networks and opens up different publishing opportunities, such as through participating in edited collections with international peers.
This is not really a secret but more of a strategy which I have developed which might benefit other SHAPE researchers, especially those who have recently completed their PhDs. When it comes to publishing, often the advice is to take your key PhD findings and try and publish them in top Q1 journals and maybe even write them up as a book. While these can be good moves, it can also delay getting your findings out there due to publication wait times. Instead, my approach has been to diversify my outputs – journal articles, chapters, and also non-traditional research outputs like blogs, policy submissions, reports. I also kept my eyes peeled for any special issues or edited collections that I could be part of because, if my abstract is accepted, the likelihood of these being published is high. In saying this, I have also published independently through standard channels, but I do think that diversification works in terms of sharing your findings widely and also demonstrating that you are productive. I have certainly found that the more productive I appear, the more invitations I get to participate in different opportunities which then often end up leading to more publications and so on. A snowball effect!
I learnt about SHAPE through an advertisement in the newsletter of The Australian Sociology Association (TASA) back in 2024. I had never heard of SHAPE before, but I was intrigued, particularly given the challenges I had faced juggling my early academic career alongside parenting twins. I was searching for an EMCR community to belong to, and SHAPE became it. When I started with SHAPE, I was very discipline-focused as a sociologist and criminologist and had not thought about how many of the issues I had faced were more widely experienced by others in the SHAPE disciplines as a result of our fields being devalued for far too long. Joining SHAPE has been one of the most valuable decisions of my early academic career so far. It has allowed me to build wonderful relationships and to advocate for a better system to support SHAPE EMCRs to fulfil their potential.
Dr Alexandra Ridgway is Chairperson of SHAPE Futures and a Lecturer in Criminology and Justice Studies at RMIT University. A socio-legal scholar, Alexandra’s research examines the intersections between migration and personal life, particularly how migration policy plays out in migrant’s everyday experiences. Alexandra holds a PhD in Sociology from The University of Hong Kong, a Masters in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Griffith University and a Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Laws from The Australian National University. Prior to undertaking her PhD, she worked in community development for over a decade during which time she specialised in working with culturally and linguistically diverse victim survivors of family violence.
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