Held each year and facilitated by a Mellon PhD fellow, the MMUF-SSRC Dissertation Writing Retreat (DWR) brings together 12 to 15 post-sixth-year graduate students for five days of intensive writing. Writing will be punctuated by structured time for each fellow to create an individual 12-month workplan with other Retreat participants. The primary feature of the workplan will be a structure for accountability to colleagues; participants will establish a calendar by which to exchange new or revised work by email and provide one another with feedback on progress.

The DWR directly reflects best practices learned from fellows who successfully completed the dissertation after an extended ABD period. Unlike the MMUF-SSRC Proposal Writing and Dissertation Development Seminar, the DWR focuses support specifically on fellows who face challenges requiring high levels of self-direction to overcome. The DWR offers support for the development of a structure for productivity with specific, self-defined marks of progress leading to dissertation completion. Eligibility will be based on the viability of completing the dissertation within a 12-month period as determined by a committee of senior scholars and SSRC staff.

This year's DWR will take place May 29-June 2, 2019 at the Oak Ridge Conference Center in Chaska, MN. For more information, contact the SSRC staff at mellonmays@ssrc.org.