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Starting a doctoral journey can be a transformative experience. Yet behind the celebratory milestones lies a quieter reality, as many postgraduate researchers (PGRs) feel lonely, overwhelmed and unsure whether and where they truly belong. As a result, their mental health and sense of purpose may slowly, often invisibly, erode.

Traditional efforts to support PGRs tend to focus on skills training, formal communities and networks, with occasional social events. While useful, these approaches rarely address the everyday gaps in PGR life. Research communities are often too thematically broad or abstract to foster genuine connection, while social events can feel like academic speed-dating. Meanwhile, many PGRs work off campus, live far from university, juggle jobs and caring responsibilities, or sit at very different stages of the PhD timeline. The result is a fragmented experience in which they may be surrounded by academics and yet feel entirely alone, carrying their vulnerabilities quietly while assuming they are the only ones struggling.

In response to these challenges, the 10 of us – a group of PGRs at a post-1992, campus-based university – decided to experiment with something deceptively simple. As we describe in our chapter in the recently published Conceptualising the Academic Self (see Sturt et al., 2026), we started walking and talking. We began with movement, conversation and copresence in everyday campus spaces. And we did so in the spirit of shared vulnerability, recognising that everyone on the doctoral path carries doubts, pressures and questions about who they are becoming regardless of their country of origin, history, identity, family circumstances, work arrangements or socioeconomic status.

Modern academic life is governed by tightly scheduled tasks, targets and metrics that discipline how and where we spend time. PGRs experience this as ‘publish-or-perish’ pressure, constant deadlines, and the sense that every hour must be justified. Walking interrupts this rhythm, which is shaped and controlled by capitalist structures (Lefebvre, 2013). Studies on walking interviews and walk-and-talk therapy suggest that moving side-by-side can reduce power imbalances and encourage openness (see for example Prince-Llewellyn and McCarthy, 2025; Kinney, 2017). Walking together thus creates an informal space in which worries about methodology, supervision, identity and the future can surface more naturally, supported by the rhythm of steps and the changing environment. It becomes easier to say ‘I’m not coping’ or ‘I don’t understand’ when those words are carried forward by shared footsteps and quiet solidarity. Conversation can flow from research problems and theoretical frameworks to family responsibilities, visa issues or culture shock. This reflects the complexities of PGR lives and allows for connecting not only as scholars but, first and foremost, as humans.

‘It becomes easier to say “I’m not coping” or “I don’t understand” when those words are carried forward by shared footsteps and quiet solidarity.’

Our walks and talks were purposefully one-to-one to reimagine familiar spaces as sites of co-learning, grounded in the pedagogy of affect (Beyes & Steyaert, 2021). As we walked, we intimately learned from each other’s moods, bodies, hesitations and hopes, not just from polished conference papers or brief ‘hello, how are you doing’ interactions. We shared the hidden curriculum of doctoral life, exchanged practical strategies, and admitted doubts and concerns that would rarely surface in formal spaces or in group gatherings. We have become, for one another, a living ‘zone of proximal development’ (Vygotsky, 1978), stretching what we believe we can do, write or become.

Ultimately, what emerges from such shared journeys is a community, where community is an evolving group of people linked by social ties and common concerns, not a mailing list or a cohort label. The collaborative activity of walking and talking reveals how shared steps, open dialogue and mutual vulnerability can reframe the doctoral experience as a communal act of learning support and transformation. For PGRs, this simple one-to-one practice can nurture collegiality, sometimes friendship, and a stronger research identity, rooted in the knowledge that others are stumbling and persevering alongside you, equally vulnerable, hence equally deserving duty of care.

References

Beyes, T., & Steyaert, C. (2021). Unsettling bodies of knowledge: Walking as a pedagogy of affect. Management Learning, 52(2), 224–242.

Kinney, P. (2017). Walking interviews: A methodology for exploring school grounds and children’s experiences. Educational Researcher, 46(4), 170–177.  

Lefebvre, H. (2013). Rhythm analysis: Space, time and everyday life. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Prince-Llewellyn, H., & McCarthy, P. (2025). Walking and talking for well-being: Exploring the effectiveness of walk and talk therapy. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 25, e12847.

Sturt, C.-A., Tishenina, M., Colombo, C., Eccles-Padwick, J., Ernest-Shay, A. F., Greenhalgh, M., Nguyen, P. T., Stewart, K.-A., Weerasooriya, T. N., & Wright, D. (2026). Discovering the power of shared journeys in doctoral education. In D. Allan & V. Ekpo (Eds.), Conceptualising the Academic Self. Emerald.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.