Welcome to Scriptoria!
I am Martha Boeglin, founder of Scriptoria.
If you are on this page, it is probably because you are a PhD candidate or are considering becoming one.
Perhaps you have the feeling that...
- you retain only a little of your readings...
- you read too slowly...
- you get lost into details...
- you will never manage all the texts you must read
- you might miss important information...
If you do, don't worry: almost every PhD candidate goes through this - I did too.
After my Philosophy studies in Strasbourg, I presented my dissertation in 1998. My topic was: La violence de l’art moderne ou : Adorno, une esthétique de la non-violence (The Violence of Modern Art or Adorno, an Aesthetic of Non-Violence).
But as a young PhD student, I was myself lost in my readings: The reading list was growing faster than I could read.
Until my supervisor told me:
- As a PhD student, you cannot read every text from the beginning to the end.
- You must select relevant information.
- You must interrogate the texts.
- You must have clear reading goals.
His advices were worth gold. I discovered simple and efficient reading techniques which saved my thesis – I wonder why universities do not teach them.
As soon as I got my doctorate, I started to run reading and writing workshops for PhD candidates. It was too painful to see so many graduate students suffering from depression, enrolled in therapy, and taking medication because they felt overwhealmed by the amount of information to read - or because the felt unable to write their thesis.
Not to mention those who dropped out before finishing their thesis (not because they were less intelligent: they were all brilliant people who had deeply researched their topic. The problem was how to deal with so much scientific information: read it, process it, use it to write a thesis).
One year ago I started this blog to help and now I begin to run online courses. I am happy about any feedback - working online is a new and challenging experience - but very exicting too!
Perhaps are you wondering where I do come from: My father is French, my mother Serbian, I grew up in Bulgaria (where I was born), Cuba, Peru and Paraguay. I've studied in France. Since 1989 I leave in Germany. After 22 years in Berlin I moved to the Black Forest.
My books
My clients
