My Academic Work

I always understood retirement never meant the end of WORK—rather finding different kinds of work, more spacious and equally meaningful.  For over 40 years I led an intense career as an academic—researching, teaching and writing about literacy, writing pedagogy, identity and social justice.  I was passionate about this work, especially my research on the multiple ways language constructs reality and the ways it might be disrupted to create other expansive meanings.

When I studied the first month of school (with colleagues Jo-Anne Reid, Rod Maclean and Alyson Simpson) we sat shoulder-to-shoulder with five-year-olds, immersed in their classroom life.  We wanted to understand the ways young children are shaped to become good schoolgirls and schoolboys.  In the process, we found highly gendered patterns of interaction and ways of speaking in schools—that are mostly invisible and taken-for-granted, but do real work to create children’s identity.

In the ‘Stories of Ageing’ project (with Terry Threadgold and Susan Feldman) we developed writing and video workshops to challenge narrow stereotypes of older women as a singular group.  Over three years, women aged 60-85 wrote and filmed rich, often surprising stories of what it means to grow older in our culture, and they created a fantastic live performance ‘We’re not nice little old ladies’ to mark International Year of Older Persons in 1999.

In the ‘Turn-around Pedagogies’ project, I worked in disadvantaged schools (with Barbara Comber) to create new modes of cross-generational mentoring between early and late career teachers.  Not only did the teachers’ work make a tangible difference to the literacy achievement of their students, it forged a model of mentoring across generations that can sustain the teaching profession into the future.

In these projects and others, I always aimed to positively impact the lives of those I researched with—from the youngest to oldest in our community.  It was such enlivening work!  One tangible outcome was the publication of nine authored or edited academic books and over sixty journal articles and book chapters. (See selected publications below).

But 2007 was a turning point.  I retired from Deakin University as an Emeritus Professor of Education and set up a consultancy on academic writing and publishing called Writing Designs.  I wanted more time to write and to assist less-experienced colleagues succeed in crafting and publishing their research.  Academic life can be perilous, especially for those early in their careers.  And so with my colleague Pat Thomson —an exceptional scholar from the University of Nottingham and my cherished writing partner for over ten years — we created a new approach to academic writing as both text work and identity work.

NO more facile advice or ‘how to’ genres!  We offered a conceptual framework, rich dialogue with writers and innovative strategies for developing clear and authoritative writing with what we call ‘hands on hips.’ That work can be found in three well-regarded Routledge publications: Helping doctoral students write (2006; 2014); Writing for peer-reviewed journals (2013); Detox your writing (2016).

Since 2007 I’ve been fortunate to work with many early career academics and PhD researchers across most universities in Australia.  I’ve read and analysed more early drafts than you can imagine and engaged in critical dialogue to excavate the argument so it is stronger, more assertive.  I run workshops and writing retreats to hone the skills of elegant, accessible prose and help writers negotiate the perils of the highly competitive world of academic journals.

I love this work.  It is a tangible way to give back to the community of scholars where I lived for so many years, and honour the mentors who nurtured my career with great generosity. 

Authored Books

Thomson, P. & Kamler, B. (2016). Detox your writing: Strategies for doctoral researchers. London and New York: Routledge.

Kamler, B. & Thomson, P. (2006, 2014, second edition) Helping doctoral students write: Pedagogies for supervision. London and New York: Routledge.

Kamler, B. & Thomson, P. (2013) Writing for peer reviewed journals. Strategies for getting published. London and New York: Routledge.

Kamler, B. (2001). Relocating the personal: A critical writing pedagogy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Kamler, B., Maclean, R., Reid, J. and Simpson, A. (1994). Shaping up nicely: The formation of schoolgirls and schoolboys in the first month of school. Canberra, ACT: Department of Education, Employment and Training.

Edited Collections

Kamler. B. (ed) (1999) Constructing gender and difference: Critical research perspectives on early childhood. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Aitchison, C., Kamler, B. and Lee, A. (eds) (2010) Publishing pedagogies for the doctorate and beyond. London and New York: Routledge.

Comber, B. & Kamler, B. (eds) (2005) Turn-around pedagogies: Literacy interventions for at-risk students. Newtown, NSW: Primary English Teaching Association.

Feldman, S., Kamler, B., Snyder, I. (eds.) (1996) Something that happens to other people: Stories of women growing older. Sydney: Random House.

Selected Articles

Lee, A. and Kamler, B. (2008) Bringing pedagogy to doctoral publishing. Teaching in Higher Education, 13 (5), 511-523.

Kamler, B. and Thomson, P. (2008) The failure of dissertation advice books: Towards alternative pedagogies for doctoral writing. Educational Researcher, 37 (8), 507-514.

Kamler, B. (2008). Rethinking doctoral publication processes: Writing from and beyond the thesis. Studies in Higher Education, 33 (3), 283-294.

Comber, B and Kamler, B (2004) ‘Getting out of deficit: Pedagogies of reconnection. Teaching Education. 15 (3): 293-310.

Boyer, I & Maney, B with Kamler, B & Comber, B (2004)  ‘Reciprocal mentoring across generations: Sustaining professional development for English teachers’. English Teaching: Practice and Critique. 3 (2): 139-150.

Kamler. B. (1999) This lovely doll who’s come to school: Morning talk as gendered language practice. In B. Kamler (ed) Constructing Gender and Difference: Critical Research Perspectives on Early Childhood. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 191-213.

Kamler, B. & Maclean, R. (1997) You can’t just go to court and move your body: University students learn to write and speak the law. Law/Text/Culture, Vol 3, 176-209.

Kamler, B. (1997) Text as body, body as text. Discourse, Special Issue, Critical Discourse Analysis in Educational Settings, B. Kamler, B. Comber, J. Cooke (eds), 18 (3), 369-388.