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PhD Journeying
Adventures through your research and practice
What to Expect from a Radically Hopeful
PhD Journeying Session
A space in which every doctoral researcher — regardless of background, discipline, or career stage — has access to the creative, reflective, and community tools they need to fulfil their research potential and share their work with those who will most benefit from it.
We operate from a foundational belief: a PhD is not merely an academic requirement but a creative act of service to knowledge and the world. Our methodology is hybrid — drawing on scholarly tradition and psychodynamic practice — using the SPARK framework (See the Vision, Plot the Path, Amplify Strengths, Remove Barriers, Kindle Community) to help researchers surface what is blocked, clarify what matters, and choose sustainable pathways.
The PhD Journeying programme is based on community, creative practice, and centring care. Our boutique format fosters depth of engagement and personal attention, always in small-groups.
❋ Intentional Structure
We support doctoral researchers to identify purpose and clarify their scholarly voice.
❋ Collaborative Energy
We build peer groups: small cohorts of researchers who develop genuine ongoing connections.
❋ Expert Facilitation
Programmes are co-created with PhD researchers and are led by experienced professors, authors, publishers and psychotherapists.
❋ A Supportive Space
Our carefully designed sessions are online, time-limited, and positioned to complement formal supervision.
Kath Burton is the founder of Radically Hopeful, an academic and community publishing venture committed to a more equitable and creative scholarly landscape. She has worked with and for scholarly communities in the UK and US to shape, validate and share creative and sholarly knowledge. Now cultivating shared spaces for community-led knowledge to flourish, Kath combines publishing expertise and group food-growing techniques to stengthen to the co-creation of creative and intellectual acts. Along with Dr Meredith Jones and Dr Donna Lee Brian, Kath is Co-Editor of the Routledge book Kardashians: A Critical Anthology. 
Dr Meredith Jones is an award winning academic and PhD supervisor/examiner. She has held tenured positions in Australian and UK universities and is a full professor. Her work has been funded by the ESRC and the British Academy, and she has authored eight books alongside many peer-reviewed journal articles. Meredith combines psychoanalytic insights with lived knowledge of the complex issues that creatives and scholars face. She is commissioning editor of the Routledge series Gender, Bodies and Transformation.How It Works
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We’re offering an introductory package price of £245 for six sessions in the 2026 programme.
The size of each group is intentionally small.
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Once you have booked your package we’ll confirm dates with you.
Each group takes place from 3-5pm BST on a fortnightly basis from Wednesday 1 July 2026.
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Now just turn up to the session you have booked. You will be welcomed to the community with care and creativity.
Contact us for more details: PhD_journeying@radicallyhopeful.org
Free Reflection Worksheet
Five Questions for the PhD You're Actually Living
Ten minutes. No right answers. A prompt to move from thinking about your PhD to noticing how it actually feels to be inside it.
No spam. Just the occasional, genuinely useful thing.
It's on its way
Check your inbox — you should have an email from us shortly with your worksheet attached.
If it doesn't arrive within a few minutes, it's worth checking your junk folder just in case.
We hope something useful surfaces when you sit with it.