The PhD by Publication offers doctoral students an opportunity to focus on publishing during their candidature. A considerable body of literature has explored questions of legitimacy, consistency and quality of this model of scholarship, while students have reflected on how this approach helped build a publishing track record and develop skills associated with writing scholarly articles [Jackson, D. (2013). Completing a PhD by publication: A review of Australian policy and implications for practice. Higher Education Research & Development, 32(3), 355–368; Robins, L., & Kanowski, P. (2008). PhD by publication: A student’s perspective. Journal of Research Practice, 4(2), 1–20]. However, there is a need to explore how this approach both shapes and reflects the student experience of doctoral studies. This auto-ethnographical article analyses my own experience of the PhD by Publication. On the one hand, this method suited my multidisciplinary research topic and approach to research and assisted the flexibility and creativity of my research. On the other, I began to view my value as a researcher and the value of my research, in terms of the quantitative performance metrics of research in output, citation counts and h-index. Concept of performativity, I analyse how the PhD by Publication potentially reshapes what it is to be a doctoral student, and how the value of doctoral students is construed by themselves and others within their university.

The COVID‐19 pandemic is both a health and an economic crisis. Economically, lockdowns across Australia have devastated business and industry, creating immediate spikes in under‐ and unemployment. These impacts intersect with the precarious labour market of casualised and "gig" economy work, where young workers constitute an established and substantial group. While negatively impacting upon many young people’s lives, in recent decades precarious employment has also been normalised for young people as they are encouraged to understand themselves as self‐reliant and entrepreneurial in their working lives. Yet, these workers have been largely abandoned in the government’s economic response to COVID‐19. The economic impact and government response to the pandemic substantially disadvantage young people. This article analyses the impact of new government initiatives: the "JobKeeper" wage subsidy scheme, "JobSeeker" payments and early access to superannuation, "JobMaker" economic recovery plan and the redesign of university fees. These initiatives compound preexisting youth policy of low welfare levels, youth wages and high university fees to economically burden young people. Contrasting the repeated expression of anything pandemic related as "unprecedented", we argue that the economic abandonment of young people in the immediate COVID‐19 crisis continues a decades‐long precedent in Australia of economically disadvantaging young people.

The Covid-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed how social work education is provided, and these changes are particularly pronounced in field education. Globally, the introduction of restrictions on mobility and social interaction have contributed to the cancellation, postponement and early termination of social work field placements. Accrediting bodies, social work field education departments and industry partner agencies have needed to rapidly adapt how placements are conceptualised and provided. This article examines the experiences of agencies who have continued to provide student placements throughout the pandemic. Interviews were conducted with placement supervisors employed at twelve human services agencies partnering with a university social work department in Melbourne, Australia. Whilst experiencing challenges, agencies outlined how they adapted to the environment to enable meaningful student placement experiences. This article contributes to an ongoing discussion around the trajectory of social work field education and the significance of agency-based placements in this evolution.

On 4 July 2020, in response to a developing ‘second wave’ of COVID-19 cases, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced that a hard lockdown would be immediately implemented in nine public housing towers in Melbourne, Australia. Approximately 500 police were dispatched to implement this lockdown, with residents prevented from leaving their buildings. Over the next fortnight, young residents in these towers, often from socially- and economically-marginalised communities, emerged as advocates for their fellow tenants, using various social media platforms to broadcast their experiences. In this article, we analyse social media posts published by 28 social media users throughout June and July of 2020, which reported on the experiences of people living within the public housing towers during the hard lockdown. We draw on the concept of territorial stigmatisation tounderstand and frame how a traditionally stigmatised physical space is reclaimed via a digital medium. concept of ‘territorial stigmatisation’ to understand and frame how a traditionally stigmatised physical space is reclaimed via a digital medium. We explore the potential for young people to use social media to challenge territorial stigmatisation and construct alternate representations of place and community.