2005:34 R

Surreptitious research - dreams and everyday life for "shadow" PhD students

The results reveal among other things that on the whole the informants neither define nor identify themselves as “shadow" PhD students, quite simply because are not aware of the term. Instead they consider themselves informal PhD students, with no specific status, and consider their situations to be unique.

The varying accounts they present mainly convey the alienation that effectively distances them from official, legitimate research. They endow their surreptitious activities with positive values that evoke images of greater research freedom, resistance to the establishment. This is not enough however to dispel the feelings of concern and insecurity about their precarious situations. For this reason pleasure becomes regret, and security uncertainty in the complex narratives that depict the alternation between everyday life and dreams for these shadow PhD students.