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April 2021

Please scroll down for upcoming training events, funding opportunities and NWSSDTP student blogs!

Matt Hanley, Lancaster University

Training and Opportunities

The Art and Practice of Participatory Research at the Science-Policy Interface (workshop)

Dates: Wednesday 12th and Thursday 13th May 2021 (online). Please register via Eventbrite to attend the whole event or specific sessions which interest you.

The event aims to bring together cutting-edge knowledge and practice in participatory research, transcending disciplinary boundaries and embracing different perspectives from academia, policy, and practice. We welcome attendees from diverse backgrounds, career stages (particularly welcoming of postgraduate and early career researchers), and from within and beyond academic geography. Sessions cover a variety of topics and formats, showcasing cutting-edge participatory research. For further details and registration see here.

What Should a Literature Review Do?

Date: Thursday 13^th May 2021: 10:00 – 12:00.
The event presented by Dr Simon Watts will discuss the purpose of the literature review and the importance of summarising, analysing and synthesising the arguments of others as a means of providing a context for your own research. It also considers some alternative models for writing and structuring a literature review chapter. See here for booking details. This event will be held on Zoom - log in details will be sent along with pre-course preparation information to delegates nearer the date of the session.

Writing & Structuring an Effective Thesis.

Date: Thursday 20^th May 2021: 10:00 – 12:00.
The event presented is by Dr Simon Watts will focus on the writing – style, structure and presentation – of an effective PhD thesis.
Writing an 80-100000 word document is very difficult indeed and this session is designed to help break the task into manageable chunks. For full details see here. This event will be held on Zoom - log-in details will be sent along with pre-course preparation information to delegates nearer the date of the session.

The Art of Seeing and Hearing the Other

Dates: 20^th and 21^st April 2021
The contributing team of artists, linguists, philosophers, and educators will share how they approach and engage in the art of seeing and hearing the other. See the April issue of ETHER News here. The registration is now open, please click here to book your place today.

Lancaster History Postgraduate Conference 2021

Dates: 17-18th June 2021
We have organised this year’s Lancaster History Postgraduate Conference to be a hybrid conference, both in-person (hopefully) and online.
We encourage people in all stages of the PhD to apply. Please see: https://www.lhpconference.com/ for more details and please get in touch here: adminLHPC@lancaster.ac.uk

LFS2021 Consumer: Puppet or Puppeteer

Back for the second Liverpool Fashion Summit, and this year we plan to bring you more interviews, initiatives, and knowledge than last year! See here for full details.

Call for papers: Environmental Humanities Northwest – Movements (deadline 5th May 2021)

Date: This free one-day workshop will take place on Wednesday 16 June 2021 online via Zoom.
Environmental Humanities Northwest is a student-led group that will facilitate interdisciplinary discussions and scholarly networking via a one-day workshop. The event will consist of three themed presentation tables focusing on the theme Movements. We would like to invite submissions from postgraduate and early career researchers to present on the theme of ‘movements’ within the environmental humanities. We welcome proposals for a range of presentation formats, but they should be no longer than 10 minutes. For full details see here.

Embodied Geographies Reading Group

The reading group is on the third Tuesday of every month (4-5 pm). If you would like to join the reading group mailing list, please contact either of us via email: O.A.Fletcher@liverpool.ac.uk / poppy.budowrth@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk or Twitter: @livAfletcher / @budworthpopppy

Participatory Photography in Research Workshop

This workshop has been designed to give PhD students a practical understanding of what is involved in designing, undertaking and communicating research involving participatory visual methods/photovoice. The workshop will include talks from a number of academics on their experiences of using the method, alongside practical activities, such as the opportunity to design and participate in a small photovoice project. In addition, you will be able to receive critical feedback on your own PhD project through both group discussions and the chance to submit short pieces of writing on your research. It will be held in May/June 2021 on Microsoft Teams over three afternoon sessions. The workshop will be facilitated by Dr Linda Liebenberg. For more details and to register please see the Eventbrite page.

Methodspace

See the full list of Methodspace resources here.

Ethical Research with Children

This excerpt from the SAGE Research Methods Foundations (Moore, 2019) introduces five steps that may help researchers consider how to embed informed consent in research activities as well as examples to show how researchers can assist children to understand, indicate, utilize, and reflect on their consent. Read the full blog here.

Methods North West sessions

Methods North West is offering another series of methodological sessions delivered by experts in their fields.
Please find details of all upcoming sessions here.

NCRM

NCRM has posted a set of resources for undertaking social research in the context of Covid-19

Participate in the new 'Changing research practice in response to Covid-19' project workshops

With further funding from ESRC, the project on how social research practices are changing in light of Covid-19 is continuing. Participate in the first knowledge exchange workshops: Researching with children during Covid-19 times (29 April) and Researching in the global South following Covid-19 (27 April).

See here for NCRM's searchable database of training events and their online training database.

Methods Lab

Methods Labs is an experimental research collective building a laboratory to stimulate creative sociological debate. Methods Lab website. Methods Lab resources

Dmitrijs Andrejevs, Language Based Area Studies, University of Manchester (2017 cohort)

Doing archival research during a pandemic

The current pandemic affected all facets of our research lives. It has reshaped our experiences of internships, friendships, research training, conferences and submission of a PhD thesis, to name just a few examples highlighted by NWSSDTP colleagues. Drawing on his experience of archival research in Riga, Latvia (September – December 2020) as well as wider advice available on the subject. See Dmitrijs' short blog post here which highlights five broad lessons he learned from doing archival research during a pandemic.

Patsy Irizar, Psychology, University of Liverpool (2017 Cohort)

Are there differences in the rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and harmful drinking in the UK Armed Forces and UK Police Service?

Patsy Irizar and Dr Sharon Stevelink (King’s College London) and colleagues have published a paper, comparing the rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and harmful drinking in males serving in the UK Armed Forces with those serving in the UK Police Service. A similar percentage of probable PTSD (approx. 4%) was found within the two occupations but identified a much higher percentage of military personnel meeting criteria for harmful drinking, compared to police employees (10% vs 3%). Read Patsy's full blog here.

Recent Events

'Experience of doing online training courses': Gabrielle Humphreys, Psychology, University of Liverpool (2019 Cohort)

Gabrielle Humphreys evaluates and develops online interventions for addictive behaviours. In her blogpost she reflects upon her experiences doing online training courses; specifically a weeklong UCL Centre for Behaviour Change Summer School and a two-month long training for professionals at London Centre for Intuitive Eating which she used ESRC’s Research Training Support Grant for. Read her blog here.

'Embodied Geographies Reading Group' : Poppy Budworth, Geography and Environment, University of Liverpool (2020 Cohort) and Olivia Fletcher, Geography and Environment, University of Manchester (2020 Cohort)

As first-year PhD students in Human Geography, we decided to start an Embodied Geographies reading group in February, as a way to bring people together from different disciplines and universities. The group has created a space for open and exploratory discussions about all things embodiment. Each month we encourage reading recommendations from group members to ensure we cover a wider range of topics; so far this has included readings on Covid-19 and data, imposter syndrome and auto-ethnography. See Olivia and Poppy's blog here.

'DataCamp’ing during Lockdown' ; Kaori Narita, Economics, University of Liverpool (2017 Cohort)

A few months in during the first lockdown, I finally started finding myself comfortable with the “new normal,” which is quite different from my old working environment, since I was never a working-from-home person and enjoyed the company of my colleagues in our PhD office. Thanks to the financial support given by NWSSDTP, however, I have developed the necessary skills as a quantitative researcher by deciding to subscribe to DataCamp. Read Kaori's full blog here .

'Presenting around the world: new spaces for virtual conferences'; Michael Greenhough, Social Studies of Science, Technology and Medicine, Lancaster University (2019 Cohort)

Amidst the pandemic, conference organisers have been tasked with reconfiguring the format of the academic conference to move into the virtual sphere. I have been lucky enough to present at two international conferences virtually over the past 12 months with RTSG funds. Read Michael's full blog here.

'Pre-registration talks – and why they’re great'; Camilla Woodrow-Hill, Psychology, University of Manchester (2020 Cohort)

One hurdle many early-stage PhD students may encounter is being unable to present at conferences until later in their PhD journey due to a lack of study data. Fortunately, with the increasing awareness of open-research practices, some conferences are inviting researchers to submit pre-registration posters or talks. This means exactly what the name suggests – researchers are given the opportunity to present research that they have not pre-registered or collected data for yet. This gives researchers the valuable opportunity to present their current research plans and collect feedback from the academic community at a point when they are still able to make changes and improvements to their study design. Read Camilla's full blog here.

Student Representatives

"Join our NWSSDTP student platform on MS Teams! We're creating a space for all NWSSDTP students on MS Teams where we can easily connect and keep in touch. This platform will be used to help us informally get to know each other (including those in your relevant pathways), communicate and run different student events. We'll send round an email soon with details of how you can join our MS Teams group". To join please email (Y.Oezcelik@liverpool.ac.uk)

Your student Representatives profiles and contact details can be found here

Wellbeing

Learning to accept your own mental illness

As part of the Voices of Academia website Lucy Arkinstall has written a blog post about her journey through higher education and learning about her mental health issues and learning to open up and receive help. She talks openly about her struggles and her tips for accepting her mental illnesses.

From the 23^rd March to the 23^rd April, Olly Kennedy (co-founder of Liverpool Fashion Summit and PhD student at the University of Liverpool – Management School) will be running the distance between the Management School (Liverpool) and 10 Downing Street (London) with two goals in mind: raising £3,000 for Oxfam’s campaign People’s Vaccine and delivering a letter to the PM asking for more support to the poorest countries in the fight against COVID-19. You can follow his journey on our Instagram and on MyVirtualMission. If you can, donate. If you can’t, share

Additional Funding Competitions

The next deadline for all NWSSDTP Additional Funding Competitions is Friday 4^th June 2021 (suggested deadline for trips taking place September – December 2021)

Submit an item

To submit an item to appear in the Newsletter (conference presentations and publications, announcements you want to make public, etc.) please email nwssdtp@liverpool.ac.uk