The present study used a longitudinal mixed-method design to investigate the relationship between post-PhD researchers’ writing conceptions and their experiences, scholarly trajectory, and networking capabilities. A total of 134 Spanish post-PhD researchers answered the Post-PhD Experience—Survey scales on Academic Writing and Social Support. One year later, a subsample of 21 participated in retrospective multimodal interviews, in which visual methods (Journey and Network Plots) were applied to analyse their writing trajectories during this period of time. The person-centred analysis revealed three post-PhD profiles regarding writing conceptions and evidenced differences among them in the way they participate in the research community and interact with other researchers. Qualitative results suggest the post-PhD researchers in each profile position themselves in the community differently and subsequently engage in distinctive writing experiences. The study provides evidence of how writer profiles appear to mediate trajectories and networking, something not evident when using only sectional designs. Relational agency is revealed to be an important aspect of productive writers. Pedagogical implications are discussed, particularly the need to promote writers’ awareness on how their writing conceptions intertwine with their strategic management of research writing practices in different contexts.

This paper presents a study designed from a socially situated and activity theory perspective aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of how Ph.D. students regulate their academic writing activity. Writing regulation is a complex activity of a highly situated and social nature, involving cyclical thought-action-emotion dynamics and the individual’s capacity to monitor his/her activity. The central purpose was to analyze how writing regulation takes place within the framework of an educational intervention, a seminar designed to help Ph.D. students write their first research articles. The seminar not only focused on teaching the discursive resources of disciplinary articles in psychology but also sought to develop students’ recognition of epistemic stances (ways of knowing) and identities (ways of being) of their academic and disciplinary communities. While doing this, the seminar also aimed at helping students overcome the contradictions they encountered as they constructed their identities as researchers and writers through writing. We collected data on seminar participants’ perceptions (through analyses of interviews, diaries, and in-class interaction) and practices (through analyses of successive drafts and peers’ and tutors’ text revisions). Contradictions represent a challenge for which the individual does not have a clear answer. Consequently, solutions need to be creative and often painful; that is, the individual needs to work out something qualitatively different from a mere combination of two competing forces. The unit of analysis was the “Regulation Episode,” defined as the sequences of discourse and/or action from which a contradiction may be inferred and which, in turn, lead to the implementation of innovative actions to solve. Results showed that contradictions regarding students’ conceptualizations of their texts—as artifacts-in-activity versus as end-products—and of their identities as disciplinary writers become visible through certain discursive manifestations such as “dilemmas” and “critical conflicts” (Engeström & Sannino, 2011). The development of students’ disciplinary writing identity was affected by their perceptions of peripheral participation in the disciplinary community and of contradictions between different communities. Two successful ways students resolved contradictions and regulated their writing activity were to redefine the output and consider the text as a tool to think; implementing these solutions resulted in substantial changes to drafts. These results might be used to design socioculturally oriented educational interventions and tools to help students develop as disciplinary writers.