Includes:
£195 per month / £1950 per year
If you purchased the course "How to write your PhD thesis" or "The fundamentals of academic writing" prior to April 2025, you do not need to purchase membership! Just login below
I wish I'd been able to take your writing course much earlier in my PhD—it would have saved me so much time and stress!
When you've spent so much time reading and researching, when you've built up so much knowledge and so many ideas, it can be overwhelming when you try to put all into writing.
If you just start writing then you can fill pages, but it's frustrating and demoralising if you put in so much work but don't feel any closer to finishing.
Our course on "How to write your PhD thesis" teaches you;
So you can;
As a PhD.Academy member, you also get access to our weekly writing feedback and Q&A sessions
This means you don't have to wait until you have a complete draft to get feedback on your work and know whether you're on the right track.
The goal of the feedback is to identify the skills and principles you need to work on. We only need a short sample to do this, as most people are consistent in the way they write. Getting feedback early and often then allows you to improve as you go, rather than writing an entire draft and then trying to apply feedback on a huge scale under immense time pressure.
Please be aware that any feedback will be visible to other members, but never shared elsewhere. This means everyone can learn together, but if you need or prefer private feedback, please see the one to one coaching page
I've learned more about writing in the last few weeks of this course than in the last 3 years of my PhD
Those who seek help early tend to need less of it...
If we can establish some basic principles, habits and techniques early in your PhD, you'll be able to avoid many of the common pitfalls of PhD study, (and better able to cope with those you can't avoid)
You can join the membership early, cancel and rejoin later if you want to, or ideally you can join for a few months early in your PhD and hopefully you won't need to rejoin again!
The live sessions are currently held on Tuesdays at 4pm UK time and Thursdays at 10 am. This is to provide options for students in a wide range of timezones- you don't have to attend both (but you can if you want to). If you can't make the live sessions you can submit questions or work for feedback and watch the recording.
The sessions may last up to 90 minutes (depending on the number of questions)
I may add extra sessions at different times as and when there is demand
Yes! You can also ask questions at any time through the forum
Unlike many PhD supervisors, I don't like to wait until you have a complete draft before giving feedback. It's much more effective to give feedback early and often while it's still a work in progress so we can identify what you need to work on.
Every Tuesday and Thursday we hold live feedback sessions, focusing on a different chapter or section each week.
You can send samples of up to 4 pages, which is usually enough for me to identify what you need to work on.
Please be aware that the feedback will be visible to other students on the course (so you can learn from different examples), but never shared elsewhere. If you need more detailed or private feedback, please see my one to one coaching service
If you submit written work for the feedback sessions, the work and feedback will be visible to other members, but never shared outside the private forum.
Any personal recording of the live sessions is strictly forbidden for this reason, and any member caught attempting to do so will be expelled from the membership program.
To further protect privacy, live sessions are recorded and transcribed locally (not on the cloud)- I never trust AI platforms with sensitive information!
Starting in April 2025, live session recordings posted on the private forum will be protected via bunny.net DRM. While this does not guarantee 100% security, it does provide a high level of protection against screen recording.
While these steps are taken to protect members information and work, neither PhD Academy Ltd nor James Hayton may be held liable for any loss or damages resulting from unauthorised sharing of written material or other information by members.
If you need private coaching, please see the one to one coaching page.
No. It's better to contact a specialist proofreader or language tutor if you need one.
I focus on writing skills; primarily how to structure your ideas in a way that someone else can follow. Once you can do that, it's easy for a proofreader to take care of any typos or grammatical errors.
It depends on the severity. While I do everything I can to accommodate everybody and make the course as accessible as possible (and have been able to help many people with similar conditions), I'm not a specialist and it's important that you first seek specialised support to help you find strategies that work for you.
If you then join the membership it's important that you share any specific difficulties or needs (you scan share this privately if you prefer).
I have recently installed a plugin on this site to make it more accessible, but haven't yet done this for the forum where much of the membership interaction takes place (it's a different system, so I can't just use the same solution).
If you have any questions before joining, please send me a message using the form below.
Previously, I ran a 6 week writing course with many of the same elements as the current membership for a one off fee.
This course included ongoing support after the course ended, as well as access future iterations of the course. This has worked well up to this point, but isn't viable long-term since it requires ongoing maintenance, which then requires new members to make it sustainable.
The monthly membership model means that I can give a higher level of support to current members while also making it more sustainable in the long term.
If you previously signed up for the 6-week course, you still have access to everything!
The membership program has been through a few iterations, with many lessons learned!
The first was closed down after some of the members formed a splinter group, with one member pretending to be my representative and messaging others to offer help without my knowledge and setting up a secret slack group, then getting angry when I said this wasn't OK... Had I kicked them out sooner I could have kept it going, but I tried too hard to accommodate everybody and resolve the issue despite the harm it was causing. Now all communication is out in the open, so there can be no secret messages.
Another iteration didn't work as it was too general and unstructured, offering help on anything PhD related, so there was little engagement.
I then decided to focus on the writing aspect, then offer other help as needed, as part of a 6-week course with ongoing support afterwards. This has worked very well, but it's necessary to charge an ongoing membership to make it viable long term, so it's now evolved back to a membership program where students can stay for as long as they need, or cancel and rejoin as they need to.
The sessions run throughout most of the year, with a pause over Christmas and the new year.
For any breaks longer than two weeks, all monthly subscription payments are paused (and you'll have plenty of notice unless it's due to an emergency).
Unfortunately, I can't offer discounts.
While I'm very aware that not all students can afford my services, it takes a lot of work to give the kind of support I give (and it has taken many years to develop the skills to do so).
However, if you just want to access the writing course videos, these will soon be available to purchase without the writing feedback or Q&A sessions for a much lower rate.
If you want to join for just a few months, it's better to do this early than to wait until you have polished work to show!
If you would like to cancel your membership, login to the forum and click on your profile option in the top right corner, where you'll find links to manage your subscription. It's also worth emailing just to check that the cancelation has gone through
If you would like to pause your membership, email with details of how long you would like to pause for, at least 10 days before the next payment date. If you cancel without emailing, then I can't guarantee you a space when you want to rejoin (though of course I'll try to fit you in if possible!)
Yes! The reason for the monthly fee is the ongoing support given to members. If you don't need the feedback or live sessions, you can cancel membership and keep access to the courses (though you will lose access to the forum and recordings of the live sessions).
Membership costs £195 (GBP) per month, or £1950 per year (US$250/2500, EU€230/2300)
All the text on this site (and every word of every video script) is written by me, personally, because I enjoy writing. I enjoy the challenges of thinking deeply and finding the right words to express my ideas. I do not advocate for the use of AI in academic research and writing, except for very limited use cases.
See also: