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Photo of the Month
The 'Sphinx bar' University of Liverpool by Sarah Elsdon
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Training and Opportunities
Intellectual Party /Summer Conference 2021
Dates: 5th -7th July 2021; 2.00-6.00 pm each day, held online (deadline for abstracts 22nd March)
Lancaster University’s postgraduate social science community would like to invite PhD and MA students to an Intellectual Party/Summer Conference.This event is a brilliant opportunity to meet research students from around the world, present your work in a friendly and encouraging environment, and engage with some of Lancaster’s fantastic academic staff. You can apply to talk about research on any topic in an open session or in one of the themed sessions. This year’s themes are:
- Things DIGITAL – any aspect of the digital world
- Things POLICY – any aspect of policy, governance, political process and law
- SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY– any aspect of research on science and technology
- PRACTICES of all kinds – organizational, health/care-related, environmental, anything.
- OPEN SESSIONS – you can submit an abstract on absolutely any topic you want.
For full details and how to submit your 250-word abstract see here.
Anxious Times: Call for Papers: PGR Symposium
Date: Keele University 17 June 2021: hosted on MS Teams
We welcome presentations of 10 or 20 minutes from postgraduate researchers of all disciplines including History, Medicine, English Literature, Psychology, Media,
Sociology, Anthropology, Public Health and Primary Care.
To submit a proposal: Please send a 250 300 word abstract, indicating the length of the paper, to the conference organiser Lucy Smith: l .j.smith@keele.ac.uk by 1 April 2021. A Registration page will be circulated in May.
For full details see here
Call for Papers GradNet Postgraduate Conference: ‘Communication, Connectivity, and Convergence’ (deadline for 250-word abstracts is Friday 7th May 2021).
Dates : 7th and 8th June 2021
Gradnet is a conference run entirely by postgraduate research students for topics in the Arts, Humanities, Social and Political Sciences and Education. We aim to offer an opportunity for Masters or PhD students, and early career researchers to present their research in a friendly environment. Papers may be invited to submit for our peer-reviewed, post-conference Emergence journal to be published at the end of the year. See here for full details.
The Sustainable Fund
This fund will award two projects that promote sustainability in the region. It will be open to small businesses and students of the universities of the funding partnerships. Each of the awards will be £500 to cover the expenses. The initiative must take place by the 30th of June 2021. For full details see here.
Vitae
Part-time doctorate - quick tips
Whatever the reason for doing your doctorate part-time, the following tips may help you. They include quotes from a Vitae film offering tips and advice gathered from part-time researchers who have successfully completed their doctorate. They will probably prove useful to full time researchers too.
For further details
'At the Margins’: call for abstract
University of Liverpool History PGR Conference, 2021
Date and time: Monday 17 – Tuesday 18 May; 2021 - 9:30 - 15:30
Open to scholars from all disciplines and universities.
Possible topics and questions might include, but are not limited to:
• The histories of those who have been marginalised
• Marginalised approaches or fields of study
• Reflections on the margins of your own work
• How margins are real or imagined
• The construction and control of margins
• How movements/theories/people have escaped the margins
• How Covid-19 has changed, or marginalised your intended research
Please send a title and an abstract of no more than 150 words to the organising team at
atthemargins@outlook.com by 26 March.
See here for full details
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.
Reimagine Research Culture Festival
Dates: 22nd - 26th March 2021
Wellcome is organising the reimagine research culture festival running from the 22nd - 26th March which aims to bring together the research community to take action and help reimagine research. For more information
British Library
Accessing British Library online content and services
The British Library has put together a guide to help you explore their collection, whether you need specific resources, specialist advice, or just some interesting stories to keep you busy right now.
See here for full details.
Administrative Data Research (ADA)
ADR UK works with expert researchers from academic institutions and other research bodies to utilise administrative data and produce valuable insights into UK society. Access to good quality administrative data is extremely valuable for research, facilitating a far more accurate and comprehensive picture of UK society than can be achieved without it. For details see here.
UK Data Service
Uk Data Service has a number of webinars available including :
Safe Researcher Training, #IdentityInData: Who Counts?, and Using Crime Data in R.
For full details and training events
NCRM
NCRM has posted a set of resources for undertaking social research in the context of Covid-19
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Online: Participatory Action Research: theories, methods and challenges (Places are limited to 50, so early booking is advisable).
Dates: Mon 7, Tues 8 and Wed 9 June 2021, 14.00-16.30
PAR is increasingly popular, involving people affected by/interested in a research topic taking an active part in designing, carrying-out, and putting research into practice. For full details and booking see here.
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Also, see here for NCRM's searchable database of training events and their online learning resources.
For example Count data - a tale of Poisson and predicting football results This resource includes a 30-minute video on analysing count data. It introduces the Poisson distribution. A sporting example is used to exemplify the concept of expected outcomes. Some social science examples are provided and some alternative models for count data are introduced.
Methods Lab
Methods Labs is an experimental research collective building a laboratory to stimulate creative sociological debate. Methods Lab website
Methods Lab resources
closer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tWRvxcMbDw&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=CLOSER
This animation introduces new researchers to analysing longitudinal data, describes how it differs from cross-sectional data analysis, and explains why different statistical techniques are required to answer different research questions. See Closer's latest newsletter here.
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Students in Focus
Antifascism and environmental peacebuilding
One cold winter afternoon in Berlin in 2016 I stood in solidarity with a small group of fellow antifascists, squaring up to about 3000 right-wing anti-immigrant protestors as they marched through the city’s Government quarter, chanting ‘We are the people’ and ‘Merkel must go!’. They were protesting the arrival in Germany of mostly Syrian refugees escaping the bloody civil war. Read Matt's full blog here.
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Matina Shafti, Psychology, University of Manchester (2019 Cohort)
Making the most out of training opportunities during a pandemic
One of the most valuable aspects of doing a PhD is the wide range of skills you can build throughout your time as a student. This is especially made possible for NWSSDTP students who have access to the Research Training Support Grant (RTSG). Read Matina's blog here .
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Student Representatives
Next NWSSDTP Student reps meeting:
Date: 22nd March: 14.00 - 16.00
This meeting will introduce ESRC students to the student reps and offer the chance to discuss views about online informal and formal events. Bring any ideas you may have about how you would like these representative organised sessions to run! Details for joining here:
Join Zoom Meeting
https://liverpool-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/98733523820?pwd=QVJIakRnNlB0WjBtZkltUElHRkliQT09
Meeting ID: 987 3352 3820
Passcode: ^C0wq42N
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"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
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Recent Events
New challenges for conference presenting: global pandemics and multiple languages
Andrea Aparicio-Castro, Social Statistics, University of Manchester (2018 Cohort)
Many PhD students have been presenting online at international conferences due to the current pandemic. I was one of them last December when I had the opportunity to participate as a speaker in the International Conference of the Latin American Population Association (ALAP, by its Spanish acronym). My presentation was about translating from five-year to one-year migrant data. More than the topic of my presentation, I would like to share how this conference was a different experience for me. Read Andrea's full blog here.
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Wellbeing
7 types of rest every person needs
Have you ever tried to fix an ongoing lack of energy by getting more sleep — only to do so and still feel exhausted?
Read more here.
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Overcoming challenges common to doctoral researchers
Thinking positively is usually the first step to achieving your goals and it might help to know that at some time most researchers have faced and overcome difficulties. Read Vitae's guide here
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University of Northampton: Students share lockdown life in art
Illustration students at the University of Northampton have shared through their art the impact of trying to study during a global pandemic. All admit it has been hard - but they are optimistic that brighter times are finally on the way. Read the full article here
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Additional Funding Competitions
Internship at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST)
Iqra Choudhry, SSSTM, University of Manchester (2017 Cohort)
"The experience has opened my eyes to the possibility of leaving academia and working in the world of policy".
I applied to the POST Fellowship hoping to get some hands-on policy experience. My PhD focuses on the relationship between science and policy on an international stage, so I was looking forward to an opportunity to see how policymaking worked on a national scale, here in the UK ...I loved working as a Research Assistant for the House of Lords Library. The team was incredibly welcoming, and they let me get stuck in right away. Within a week, I was working on several projects, from answering research enquiries about the 2020 UK-Africa Investment Summit and the effects of climate change, to writing pieces for the House of Lords Library website and planning out contributions to the House of Lords Library Magazine. Read Iqra's full blog here.
The next deadline for all NWSSDTP Additional Funding Competitions is Friday 4th June 2021 (suggested deadline for trips taking place September – December 2021)
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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
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