2026 Dissertation Writing Intensive Resources

Panelists include Dr. Salman Rashdi, Muriel Konne, and Ishita Lahiri

Resources discussed:

• Map and track multi-week goals using this flexible, interactive guide
• Structure your writing sessions using a reflective, oriented approach with this writing session planner
• The Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities – Explore the range of interdisciplinary scholarly events, research clusters, and funding opportunities offered through this on-campus center
• Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (Anne Lamott) – A widely recommended and approachable book on the process of writing
• Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies (edited by Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle) – A book from the field of writing center studies touching on the social nature of writing
• The Graduate Writer’s Reading List – Browse this collection of recommended reads about the writing and creative practice
• One-on-one writing appointments at the OWRC— Get 45 minutes of personalized, writer-driven feedback from a member of the OWRC tutoring staff. Appointments resume September 29th, 2026.
• The Eisenhower Matrix – Explore this strategy for prioritizing tasks and responsibilities

• Start your own writing group – Browse tips for getting your writing group off to a strong start
• Practicing the Art of Saying No – Advice from the Core Programs team at the UW Graduate School
• National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity (NCFDD) – Access the NCFDD’s vast range of resources and support for free through the University of Washington’s institutional membership.
• What is a Gantt chart? – Learn about the Gantt chart as a project planning and management tool
• SAL Staff Recommend: Seattle’s Best Spots for Bibliophiles – Browse recommended reading and writing spots from Seattle Arts & Lectures
• “Summertime Selves (On Professionalization)” – A critical reflection on summertime productivity in academic environments.
• Write for You podcast – Listen in to conversations about writing process and practice from current and recent UW graduate writers

Additional resources & services:

• Summary of graduate resources from the OWRC – For grad writers looking to learn about the support offered by the OWRC

Presented by librarians Madeline Mundt, Elliott Stevens, and Liz Bedford

Webinar slides:

• Scholarly Publishing and Copyright (created by Liz Bedford)
• Multimodal Library Resources for Dissertation Writers (created by Elliott Stevens with links to material from Madeline Mundt and Liz Bedford)
• Research Commons slides (created by Madeline Mundt)

Resources discussed:

• The Research Commons – A place to collaborate and connect with fellow students and faculty on research projects, a hub of support for graduate student research, and a venue for workshop and presentation opportunities
  • Browse the Research Commons’ calendar of events
  • Find funding support through the Graduate Funding Information Service (GFIS)
  • Explore options for digital scholarship hosting
• Scholars’ Studio – An symposium event allowing graduate students to practice presenting their research to a broad audience in 5 minutes or less
• Open Scholarship Commons – Explore UW Libraries tools, experts, and spaces facilitating accessible, technology-intensive work across disciplinary boundaries
  • Browse available tools and equipment here
  • Check out the recording studio office hours
  • Explore audio recording and editing with Audacity
• Reservable library spaces
  • Within the Research Commons
  • Across UW Libraries spaces
• UW Libraries Summer Workshop Series – A workshop series focusing on the tools and topics from the most popular learning workshops offered by UW Libraries
• UW Libraries Storytelling Fellows – A free program helping students, faculty and staff communicate their research more effectively through storytelling
• Write for You podcast – Listen in to conversations about writing process and practice from current and recent UW graduate writers

• Explore multimedia productivity apps provided through UW’s institutional subscription to Microsoft 365.
• Nontraditional dissertations:
  • My Gothic Dissertation
  • Digital Arts & Experimental Media dissertations (UW)
• UW policies on copyright and guidance on fair use.
• Library guide on article publishing and publisher agreements.
• UW policy and guidance on digital accessibility
• UW overview of accessible technology services (ATS)
  • Connect with the DO-IT Center for additional support and guidance on navigating ATS
• Digital accessibility benchmarks:
  • Accessible use of color contrast
  • Accessibility for utilizing screen readers
  • Implementing alternative descriptive text (alt text) for images, including describing figures
• Create accessible documents:
  • PDFs
  • Overleaf
  • Other design and text softwares
  • Utilize language tagging in multilingual documents
• Learn more about digital accessibility and best practices with resources compiled here

Additional resources & services:

• Ask Us! Libraries chat reference – Chat with a librarian virtually for guidance accessing services or research help.
• The Graduate Writer’s Reading List – Browse this collection of recommended reads about the writing and creative practice.
• Start your own writing group – Browse tips for getting your writing group off to a strong start.
• Structure your writing sessions using a reflective, oriented approach with this writing session planner
• Map and track multi-week goals using this flexible, interactive guide.
• National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity (NCFDD) – Access the NCFDD’s vast range of resources and support for free through the University of Washington’s institutional membership.

Panelists include Dr. Imam Subkhan, Erica Nerbonne, and Amelia Lehosit

Books and articles mentioned:

• Deleuze, Gilles. 1995. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. Columbia University Press. (Available via UW Libraries)
• Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 2010. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Penguin. (Available via UW Libraries)
• Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1988. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press. (Available via UW Libraries)
• Subkhan, Imam. 2026. “Techno-Nationalism and the Indonesian Scientific Diaspora in the United States.” Diaspora Studies, February, 1–25. doi:10.1163/09763457-bja10188.
• Lehosit, Amelia. 2024. “A Tale of Two Halls: An Exploration of the Natural World in The Wife’s Lament.” Comitatus 55 (1): 1–27. doi:10.1353/cjm.2024.a941930.

Relevant resources for graduate writers:

• Summary of graduate resources from the OWRC – For grad writers looking to learn about the support offered by the OWRC
• Write for You podcast – Listen in to conversations about writing process and practice from current and recent UW graduate writers
• National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity (NCFDD) – Access the NCFDD’s vast range of resources and support for free through the University of Washington’s institutional membership.
• Find funding support through the Graduate Funding Information Service (GFIS)
• Browse the UW Graduate School’s list of funded fellowships

Presented by Dr. Gina Tesoriero, Preetam Dammu, and Shahan Ali Memon

Presenter slides:

• GenAI as an Assistive Technology (Dr. Gina Tesoriero)
• How is AI Changing Science (Shahan Ali Memon)

What is…

• What’s Co-design? (KA McKercher, Beyond Sticky Notes)
• What Is A Codebook? (ICPSR)
• What Is A Reasoning Model? (Dave Bergmann, IBM Think)
• What is Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)? (Google)
• What Is Human-in-the-Loop? (Cole Stryker, IBM Think)
• What are AI hallucinations? (IBM)
• “What Are AI Tokens? The Language and Currency Powering Modern AI” (Dave Salvator, NVIDIA)

Tools and resources:

• AI Usage Cards for transparent AI documentation – A non-commercial service by the University of Göttingen promoting transparency in AI use
• Guide to Local LLMs (Mostafa Gouda, ScrapFly)
• Local LLM options:
  • Ollama
  • Gemma (Google)
  • Llama (Meta)
  • Deepseek
• NotebookLM – Gina’s current go-to AI tool
• Otter – An AI notetaking tool
• Codex plugin for Claude Code
• The Black Spatula Project – An open initiative to investigate the potential of large language models (LLMs) to identify errors in scientific papers

Writing on Generative AI:

• “Ableism and ChatGPT: Why People Fear It Versus Why They Should Fear It” (Mich Ciurria, Blog of the APA)
• “Autoethnographic Insights from Neurodivergent GAI ‘Power Users'”
  • Glazko, Kate, JunHyeok Cha, Aaleyah Lewis, Ben Kosa, Brianna L Wimer, Andrew Zheng, Yiwei Zheng, and Jennifer Mankoff. 2025. “Autoethnographic Insights from Neurodivergent GAI ‘Power Users.’” In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM. doi:10.1145/3706598.3713670.
• “Supporting Cognition With Modern Technology: Distributed Cognition Today and in an AI-Enhanced Future”
  • Grinschgl S, Neubauer AC. Supporting Cognition With Modern Technology: Distributed Cognition Today and in an AI-Enhanced Future. Front Artif Intell. 2022 Jul 14;5:908261. doi: 10.3389/frai.2022.908261. PMID: 35910191; PMCID: PMC9329671.

• “The Obsolescence of Traditional Peer Review: Why AI Should Replace Human Validation in Scientific Research” (Preprint; Richard Murdoch Montgomery)
• “LLM Hallucinations in the Wild: Large-scale Evidence from Non-existent Citations”
  • Zhao, Zhenyue, Yihe Wang, Toby Stuart, Mathijs De Vaan, Paul Ginsparg, and Yian Yin. 2026. “LLM Hallucinations in the Wild: Large-Scale Evidence from Non-Existent Citations,” arXiv.org, May. doi:10.48550/arxiv.2605.07723.
• “Mapping the Increasing Use of LLMs in Scientific Papers”
  • Liang, Weixin, Yaohui Zhang, Zhengxuan Wu, Haley Lepp, Wenlong Ji, Xuandong Zhao, Hancheng Cao, et al. 2024. “Mapping the Increasing Use of LLMs in Scientific Papers,” arXiv.org, April. doi:10.48550/arxiv.2404.01268.
• “Towards End-to-end Automation of AI Research”
  • Lu, C., Lu, C., Lange, R.T. et al. Towards end-to-end automation of AI research. Nature 651, 914–919 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10265-5.
• “Existential Pessimism vs. Accelerationism: Why Tech Needs a Rational, Humanistic ‘Third Way'” (Cosmos Institute and Brendan McCord, Cosmos Institute)
• “Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt When Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task” – A publication from MIT Media Lab exploring the neural and behavioral consequences of LLM-assisted essay writing
  • MIT Media Lab
• “Search Engines Post-ChatGPT: How Generative Artificial Intelligence Could Make Search Less Reliable” (Shahan Ali Memon and Jevin D. West, University of Washington Center for an Informed Public)
• “AI-Driven Dark Patterns: How Artificial Intelligence Is Supercharging Digital Manipulation” (Federico Guerrini, Forbes)
• Bender, Emily M., and Alex Hanna. 2026. The AI Con : How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want. Harper. (Available via UW Libraries; associated website here).

Additional resources:

• Effective and Responsible Use of AI in Research – Guidance on generative AI usage from the UW Graduate School
• Critical AI literacy resources from UW Libraries – A tutorial for UW researchers
  • Although aimed at undergraduates, this resource can be helpful for all researchers in reflecting on utilization on generative AI in research work.