I’ve been busy going to the library to get books to find out about research degrees, being an international student, Australian sports and reading areas that I’ve been recommended to be more familiar with. The following list includes some of the books I’ve been reading and browsing through:
- The business of sport management / edited by John Beech and Simon Chadwick. Checked this out today. Goes into some of the topology of sports fans. Mentions the AFL in a case study. Still skimming the book.
- The international student’s handbook : living and studying in Australia / Danny Ong. Not useful for international research students who have a native language of English who come in mid-term. Less useful in general for research students. Separately, less useful for students who speak English. (At the same time, written at a level that seems like it could be out of reach for non-English speakers.) The book is mostly aimed at non-English speaking 18 to 19 year-olds who have never lived on their own before and are first time undergraduates.
- Excellent dissertations! / Peter (something). Did not find it useful.
- The postgraduate research handbook: succeed with your MA, MPhil, ED and PhD / Gina Wisker. Written for an American audience. Focuses a lot on coursework underlying the research. Timelines along that. Not so helpful for an international student inside the Australian system.
- Inside sports / edited by Jay Coakley and Peter Donnelly. Skimmed a bit. Did not seem particularly relevant to my interests.
- Fanfare: spectator culture and Australian rules football / edited by Matthew Nicholson. Slowly reading this for content and to learn about the fans and underlying behaviors, demographic patterns and allegiances. This would be helpful as background knowledge to explain social media patterns. Section on the cheer squads was interesting.
- The research student’s guide to success / Pat Cryer. Best of the books about this topic. I’m reading parts mostly to understand parts of the process, figure out if there is anything I’m obviously missing and to get an idea for what the text should generally look like in terms of organization. Helpful for that. Mostly skimming when I’m not doing other things.