I'm quite aware that the questions I ask are often quite specific to my subject (within biology). I know i can email specific people for answers to specific questions but I'm also interested in joining in on general discussions (and perhaps being able to answer some questions to help others too?!).

Does anyone know how to find out which other forums exist? It would be useful to hear people chatting about my topic as I come from a small reseach group and get only VERY limited oppertunity to have a two-way conversation about my work or the subject. I know a lot of the phD is about knowledge transfer and although reading is great talking is still better in many ways and I'm simply not surrounded by knowledge.

If I talk to someone about the topic or hear other peoples discussing it I feel much more motivated and excited about my project again (yes I am losing steam a bit). And it helps me direct reading as I tend to go and find out more about the things I've heard mentioned.

Try Googling "biology forums" - I'm a chemist so am not sure how good they are.

Cheers

Thank you. I've just tried it and it looks promising... They have a range of forums on biology-online to cover some of the different topics of biology. It isn't PhD student specific and I was hoping to find a forum that academics might use... but I'll wait and see what answers I get before I pass more judgement than that. Thanks.

Hi, I hope you find what you're looking for but I have to say that if you're searching specifically for PhD forums, unless there's something I've been missing, I've found them very thin on the ground.

As already mentioned, the best idea is probably to google for subject specific forums... even though many users of them probably won't be PhDers. Best of luck to you and wherever you go - and hope you don't come across too many people posting rubbish. There are some real idiots out there!

Thanks Beverly!