You’re new to research, a PhD candidate or a professional moving from practice to enquiry. You’re committed, passionate about your subject, and excited about your contribution to knowledge.

But you’ve hit a snag. Your literature review.

You’ve done the recommended reading in the how-to books, sat through the self-study tutorials, and followed the easy-step guides.

You’ve gone through stacks of studies in your field. You’ve sunk months into a draft. But the feedback when it comes is like a punch in the stomach: Too descriptive. Critically evaluate the studies. Link them together. Don’t summarise, synthesise. Or maybe you’ve gone for publication and the editor has turned you down flat: Weak engagement with the literature.

You sink into your chair and randomly thumb the pages. Link the studies? Synthesise? Weak engagement? What do these things even mean?!

Here at Writing Works Consulting, I understand the challenges you face as a new researcher: I’ve been there. You can find plenty of advice on what to do, but very little on how. That’s why I created this workshop.

I cut through all the confusion and show you what you really need to know to write your literature review. You’ll learn how to:

• Break out of the description trap

• Turn a pile of notes into a case for your research question

• Move from critiquing single studies to analysing a body of scholarship

• Identify patterns and trends in previous research (spotting that mysterious ‘gap’)

• Use these patterns and trends as evidence in your argument

• Organise and rhetorically craft your review