About our Academic Writing Centre

Writing Workshops

The UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School Academic Writing Centre is run by Dr Megan McGurk. The UCD Academic Writing Centre in Belfield can be found at 
https://www.ucd.ie/writingcentre/

Academic Writing

Any topic you wish to write about has already received a significant amount of academic inquiry. Scholars communicate through citation as a method to trace how ideas develop through research. Learn the basics of argumentation, how to paraphrase research and how to cite your sources in the Harvard referencing format.

Persuasive Writing

Writers often labour under the misconception that if they just collect enough data they can persuade an audience. Yet people are rarely convinced by facts alone. We’ll investigate strategies to distinguish your writing from the default ‘officialese’ prose that dominates business practitioner style, but rarely inspires or encourages an audience to action. Persuasive writing incorporates stylish prose, an angle of vision, emphasis and storytelling.

Business & Report Writing

Business writing is transactional. People turn to writers who can help them to solve problems and make decisions. Practitioner style requires writers to be clear, concise and coherent when offering recommendations. We’ll cover report style, format and presentation.

Collaborative Writing

Group writing assignments can pose a major challenge for post-grads. Currently, more than 80% of writing produced by companies and organisations occurs through a collaborative effort. Learn effective strategies to balance and negotiate your team projects.

Be your own editor

First draft submissions will never garner top marks with lecturers, employers, clients or stakeholders. Develop a revision habit that allows you to benefit from building upon a tentative piece into a polished whole. Skilled writers do not leave projects to the last minute and they do not hesitate to delete and re-write. Learn how to identify problems at the sentence level in order to professionalise your writing.