Creating Impact through your PhD
Social Science Research in Health and Medicine
Workshop: Negotiating Data-Collection
Collecting qualitative data can often be an overwhelming and stressful process. In part this is because it presents numerous and ongoing ethical issues which must be navigated. This workshop addresses the emotional energy that is expended during data-collection and the need to develop spaces where disclosing the personal challenges this presents is not viewed as a sign of weakness or inefficiency but, instead, intrinsic to qualitative methodologies. It also considers the principles of ethical practice and how they can be applied to gain ethical approval in health settings. Helpful strategies for self-management and ethical practice in research will be identified.
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Both speakers will draw on their vast experience of fieldwork to discuss what might be considered to be good practice when you are faced with ‘ethically important moments’. They will reflect honestly about such issues as decision making in the field and positive ways of working with your supervisors and/or colleagues in order to negotiate challenging fieldwork experiences.
Workshop: Framing Critical Public Health for Funders
Framing critical public health research for post-doctoral funding applications presents many challenges. This workshop revolves around discussion of how specific research topics can be best made to appeal to different funders and useful strategies to adopt when applying for grants as an early career researcher. Speakers with a broad range of experience and expertise have been invited in order to allow for different perspectives to be put forward. Among topics to be discussed are: how to make the transition from a postgraduate award to establishing yourself as an early career researcher; the difficulties involved with accurately representing and engaging with complex issues and pragmatically meeting the requirements of funders; how to make your grant applications stand out to a funder.
Workshop: Publishing and Disseminating Findings
This workshop brings together academics and a representative from a publisher in order to discuss publishing opportunities available for early career researchers and good strategies to develop in order to make the most of doctoral research findings. A well-published early career researcher will discuss their publishing strategy and experiences. The editor of a journal will speak about what is required in order to get your work published in a high-quality journal. The Senior Commissioning Editor for the social sciences at a leading book publisher will discuss the publishing options available to those early in their academic careers.
Workshop: Public Engagement and Research Impact
This workshop brings together researchers and external collaborators working in the creative industries to discuss their collaborative projects. The notions of research impact and public engagement will be discussed including how best to approach navigating the relationship between researchers and artists/designers in order to produce engaging and impactful work. Opportunities for funding and collaboration which are available to doctoral students and early career researchers will be highlighted with consideration given to the motives behind ensuring research engages the public and has an impact beyond academia.
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Examples of projects to be discussed:
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​Equity is the Answer: http://picturingathesis.site/index.html
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Art Lift: http://www.artlift.org/
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The Waiting Room: http://www.bath.ac.uk/research/news/2016/01/12/the-waiting-room/
Exhibition: Equity is the Answer
After the workshops are completed, works from the AWL 'Picturing a Thesis' project will be displayed in the ‘Equity is the Answer’ exhibition. This exhibition will take those in attendance from theory into practice. It will provide doctoral students and early career researchers with examples of good practice in order to help facilitate their own thinking about the need to engage different audiences and how they might achieve this by transforming their research findings using creative mediums. External partners from the project will be in attendance along with the artists whose works were selected for the exhibition. The exhibition will provide students and early career researchers with an informal setting to network with all academic and external partners and to identify and establish links with particular artists who they feel could help them to translate their own research findings in order to increase the impact their work may have.
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The exhibition will be displayed on campus at the university's art space The Edge: https://www.icia.org.uk/visit/the-edge/
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Those attending the training event will get a 'private view' of the exhibition between 17:00 - 18:00 before it opens to the public and runs late into the evening. The exhibition will be accompanied by a wine reception. Reproductions of the works being exhibited and other related items will be sold on the night in order to raise funds to be donated to the social change organisation Edge Fund: https://edgefund.org.uk/
In alignment with the values of the PhD project that inspired the works displayed in the exhibition, Edge Fund supports those taking action for a just, equitable and sustainable world. Those attending the event are advised to bring some money with them as they will almost certainly want to make a donation to this cause and go home with something that’s easy on the eye.