Feeling the doctorate: Is doctoral research that studies the emotional labor of doctoral students possible?

This paper addresses the emotional labor of qualitative researchers in the social sciences, in general, and of doctoral students in the social sciences whose research is conducted using the qualitative research paradigm, in particular. The first part of this paper presents a brief review of the literature on the emotional labor of researchers in the social sciences. The second part of this paper discusses a doctoral research that investigates the emotional labor of doctoral students, examining two questions: First, why is it important to study the emotional labor of doctoral students? And second, can the topic "The emotional labor of doctoral students while conducting their doctoral research" in itself constitute a topic for a doctoral dissertation?