Still Yours: A Doctoral Researcher's Guide to AI

By Michael Rowe and Benita Olivier

PhD students are integrating AI into their research, some confidently, most uncertainly, and nearly all without adequate guidance on what they're actually gaining or giving up. What has been almost entirely absent is honest, practical guidance on how to work effectively with AI while protecting the intellectual development that a doctorate is supposed to provide.

This book fills that gap, arguing that the most important challenge facing doctoral researchers in the age of AI is a paradox: developing the expertise to evaluate AI outputs requires the very skills that AI threatens to replace. Writing well, thinking methodologically, reading critically, and reasoning through complex problems; these capacities develop through struggle. When AI removes that struggle, it risks removing the development.

The book is organised into three parts. Part 1 frames the landscape and establishes the core argument, including an honest account of what AI can and cannot currently do in research, the paradox at the heart of the use of AI in doctoral research, and a principled approach to integrity that goes beyond institutional policy. Part 2, the practical core, is structured not by research stage but by the type of relationships students have with AI: a thinking partner, research assistant, writing collaborator, mediator of relationships, and project manager. Part 3 addresses questions of identity, integrity, and the longer arc of development, what it means to remain the intellectual author of your own research when that authorship is increasingly shared with AI.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 3032410479
• ISBN13: 9783032410474
• Release Date: February 2027
• Publisher: Springer
• Length: 192 Pages