Doctoral Coaching
Selective. Application-based. Transformative.
Doctoral research is demanding — intellectually, structurally, and institutionally. Many PhD students develop projects that are conceptually ambitious yet difficult to realize within conventional academic expectations and support structures, especially in interdisciplinary, movement-based, or practitioner-informed domains.
I work closely with a small number of doctoral students each year on dissertations that bridge scholarly theory and lived practice. Coaching is offered on a strictly limited, application-based basis. This page describes what coaching looks like, who I work well with, and how to apply.
Who I Work Well With
I am particularly well-suited to support students who are:
- Designing qualitative or theoretical dissertations
- Working with autoethnography or practice-based research
- Bridging scholarly theory and lived practice
- Engaging movement-based learning, ecological approaches to adaptation, cross-cultural practice, embodiment, or transformation studies
- Studying in transformative, integral, transpersonal, or interdisciplinary doctoral programs
- Struggling to translate embodied insight into a structured academic argument
Areas of Scholarly Support
Questions?
Please contact me with questions or for more information.
- Developing and clarifying research questions
- Strengthening epistemological and theoretical grounding
- Aligning methodology with research aims
- Anticipating committee concern
- Autoethnography (analytic, collaborative)
- Phenomenology
- Practice-as-research (technique as knowledge)
- Integrating practitioner expertise into scholarly frameworks
- Cross-cultural considerations and positionality
- Structural organization, coherence, and argument precision
- Conceptual integration across sections
- APA formatting as a learned skill
- Refinement toward publication standards
- Project planning and goal setting
- Committee communication
- Responding to critical feedback
- Dissertation defense and slide preparation
Coaching Format & Structure
Coaching takes one of three forms depending on what you need:
- Sustained mentorship: ongoing engagement across multiple stages of dissertation work, typically monthly to biweekly meetings with reading and feedback between sessions. The most common format.
- Focused intensives: short-duration engagements around a specific milestone (proposal defense, qualifying exam, dissertation defense).
- Structural reviews: a single substantive review of a draft chapter, proposal, or methodology section, with detailed written feedback. Sometimes the right starting point before a longer engagement.All work is virtual.
Fees are discussed individually based on engagement format and student circumstances.
A Note on Fit
I work best with students who:
- Welcome direct and substantive feedback
- Value conceptual rigor
- Are willing to revise deeply
- Understand that serious scholarship requires disciplined effort
If you are seeking affirmation without revision or need someone to motivate you, I am not the right fit. If you are committed to producing rigorous, original scholarship and want a demanding but supportive sounding board, I would be glad to speak with you.
Questions?
Please contact me with questions for more information.
My Track Record
I served as Fellow and Senior Fellow at the Center for Writing and Scholarship at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) from 2022 to 2024, working weekly with 5–7 PhD students at all stages of dissertation work: idea generation, literature review, proposal development, drafting, revision, APA, and defense preparation. I have led repeated workshops at CIIS on autoethnography, bringing personal narrative into academic writing, presentation craft, dissertation process navigation, and data analysis via bricolage. Subsequently, I have taught three doctoral-level courses in qualitative research methods, presentation skills, and literature review.
My own doctoral dissertation — Becoming Imperceptible: A Phenomenological Autoethnographic Exploration of Ninpo Taijutsu as a Technology of the Self — was a conceptually complex transdisciplinary project integrating ecological learning, poststructural cultural theory, phenomenology, autoethnography, and cross-cultural analysis with lived experience. I have navigated firsthand the work of holding a conceptually ambitious project together through the proposal, draft, committee, and defense stages.
My Approach
I approach coaching as:
- Collaborative but not directive
- Critical but constructive
- Intellectually demanding and reflective
- Grounded in experiential learning
Where appropriate, I draw on ecological ways of thinking about perception and attunement, not as metaphor, but as practical tools for identifying gaps, misalignments, and unexamined assumptions in research design.
Questions?
Please contact me with questions or for more information.
How to Apply
Because I work with a limited number of clients, I ask prospective coaching clients to send a brief written application before any conversation. This lets me assess fit honestly and avoid wasting your time if I am not the right person.
Please send a message of roughly 300 to 500 words including:
- Your program and institution
- Where you are in your doctoral process (coursework, comps, proposal, drafting, defense)
- Your research topic, working research question, and the methodology you are considering (if known)
- What you need help with most
- What kind of engagement you are looking for (sustained, intensive, single review)
- How you came across my work
I review applications on a rolling basis and respond within one week. If I am at capacity, I will say so directly and, where possible, suggest other coaches or resources who might be a fit.
Questions?
Please contact me with questions or for more information.