The internationalisation of universities, increasingly associated with the ongoing economisation and massification of higher education, has had a direct impact on doctoral education. Changing practices of doctoral education are supported and reinforced by policies and strategies that focus on increasing the output of doctoral candidates on the one hand and the research output – mostly in English – on the other. In light of the growing dominance of English in academia, the role of multilingualism has, until now, not been sufficiently addressed – despite its marked influence.
In this presentation, I draw on an exploratory study that focuses on the voices of young international researchers, from the social sciences and the humanities at the University of Luxembourg. The study will help reveal the ways in which doctoral students make sense of their research environment as well as current issues that deal with their choices in language use. Firstly, I will provide two main approaches to analysing interview data (inductive and deductive). Secondly, I will show different stages of qualitative content analysis using current semi-structured interview data from my doctoral research. In addition, the presentation will critically explore some key challenges confronted in processes of qualitative analysis.