Publishing during and after your PhD: strategies, setbacks, and successes

Why are some academics, especially early-career researchers, more successful in academic publishing, and how do they publish despite the challenges they meet?  

Publishing is essential to an academic career. Apart from turning PhD research into publications, early-career researchers must also publish beyond the scope of their PhD thesis. Building an academic profile that leads to permanent employment happens while navigating fixed-term contracts, heavy workloads, and responsibilities beyond academia.  

This informal and practical online discussion brings together four academics at early- and mid-career stages, with an editorial insight, to reflect openly on their experiences of publishing during and after your PhD. There is no single formula for success, and the speakers will share the different strategies and choices involved in developing a growing publication profile. 

The discussion will consider questions including: 

• How can doctoral researchers begin publishing without undermining progress on their thesis? 

• How should early-career researchers decide what, where and when to publish? 

• How can a thesis be converted into journal articles or a book? 

• What makes a convincing journal article, and how should authors respond to reviewers? 

• How can researchers recover from rejection or difficult publishing experiences? 

• Is it better to prioritise prestigious journals, speed of publication or reaching the right audience? 

• When does collaboration help, and how can co-authorship be managed effectively? 

• How can researchers develop a recognisable profile without becoming confined to a single niche topic? 

• How can publishing be balanced with teaching, temporary contracts, caregiving and other professional and personal responsibilities? 

The event will be a 90-minute podcast-style panel discussion, chaired by Artur Nadiiev. Approximately one hour will be devoted to questions submitted by participants in advance, followed by an open audience Q&A. 

Please include your questions with this registration form to help us identify the publishing questions and challenges you would most like the speakers to address. You may address your question to a particular speaker or just to the panel.  

The session is intended primarily for Politics and IR doctoral researchers and early-career academics, although it is open to anyone interested in improving their publishing strategy and academic profile. No prior publishing experience is required. 

Speakers

Dr Precious Chatterje-Doody 

Precious Chatterje-Doody is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Studies at The Open University and an Associate Editor of International Affairs and one of the editors for the BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies. She brings to the discussion the combined perspective of an academic author and journal editor. Her publication record includes the coauthored monographs Russia, Disinformation and the Liberal Order, Russia Today and Conspiracy Theories, and a forthcoming book, The Russian identity riddle, as well as journal articles and chapters on propaganda, populism, political communication, media, identity, and security. Drawing on her editorial experience, she will offer insight into how editors evaluate submissions, what distinguishes a promising manuscript from one that is not yet ready, how editorial decisions are made, and how authors can respond effectively to peer review and rejection. 

Dr Marnie Howlett 

Marnie Howlett is an Associate Professor of International Relations in Eastern Europe and Eurasia at the University of Oxford. She has published extensively during and after her PhD. Having received her PhD in International Relations (2021) from the London School of Economics (LSE), she has built a wide-ranging publication record at the nexus of geopolitics, cartography, borders, nationalism within Eastern Europe and Eurasia, and qualitative methodology. Her work has appeared in journals including the American Journal of Political Science, Qualitative Research, Political Geography, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, International Studies Perspectives and Communist and Post-Communist Studies. Her article “Looking at the ‘field’ through a Zoom lens: Methodological reflections on conducting online research during a global pandemic” on conducting fieldwork through digital platforms has become an especially widely cited contribution to qualitative research methodology, with over 900 citations. Drawing on experience of both sole-authored and collaborative publishing, she will discuss publishing during the PhD, turning fieldwork and methodological challenges into articles, and managing ambitious collaborative projects. 

Dr Jade McGlynn 

Jade McGlynn is Head of the Ukraine and Russia Programme, Senior Research Fellow at King's College London's Centre for Statecraft and National Security, and a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of War Studies. She holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford (2020), where she previously served as a Lecturer in Russian. She has established a prominent publishing profile across academic, policy and general readership audiences. She is the author of two books published in 2023: Memory Makers: The Politics of the Past in Putin’s Russia, an academic study of the political uses of history, and Russia’s War, which examines Russian public attitudes towards the invasion of Ukraine. In addition to these books, she has published peer-reviewed research on propaganda, memory politics, identity, and Russia and Ukraine. Her experience offers a valuable perspective on developing a book from doctoral research and on publishing different kinds of outputs for different readerships.  

Dr Bohdana Kurylo 

Bohdana Kurylo is a Fellow in Qualitative Methodology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She earned her PhD in International Relations and East European Studies from University College London (2025) while teaching at UCL, KCL, QMUL, and Oxford Brookes. Her publication record includes twelve peer-reviewed journal articles – nine sole-authored and five published during her doctorate. She has developed a distinctive research profile spanning international security, East European politics, interpretive methodology, and the ethics of knowledge production. Her work has appeared in International Affairs, Review of International Studies, International Studies Review, International Relations, Security Dialogue, and European Journal of International Security, receiving two BASEES prizes and an ASN Doctoral Paper Award. She is currently completing her first monograph on civil society as a security actor in Poland and Ukraine. She will reflect on publishing beyond the thesis, building a recognisable research agenda, and publishing alongside teaching and fixed-term employment. 

Registration will close two hours before the event begins.