This event is designed to support the next generation of health and medicine researchers to conduct and promote impactful research. It will bring together doctoral students, experienced academic colleagues, and external partners to engage with issues pertinent to building a career within the social study of health and illness. The aim is to provide doctoral researchers with guidance and support for their present and future research endeavours – as well as offering an important networking opportunity.

 

The day will orientate around four workshops led by experts in the associated fields. The workshops will be open and interactive to allow for issues pertinent to the students to direct the guidance and support available to them. Rather than providing students with a lecture format which neglects the specificity of each of their individual situations, the workshops are designed to facilitate discussion and activities in small groups which meet each students’ needs.

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Each workshop responds to an area of knowledge and/or experience which is fundamental during/post-PhD. By attending this event, doctoral students and early career researchers will gain insight and make connections which will prove vital to the successful completion of their doctoral research and making an effective and productive transition to post-doctoral/early-career research.

 

Public engagement and research impact are two areas of academic life which are becoming increasing important to those attempting to forge successful academic careers. However, the focus of doctoral training more generally tends to be on effectively completing PhD projects rather than translating findings into engaging and impactful outputs. In an attempt to close this gap, this event will provide doctoral students and early career researchers with guidance on how to usefully approach this task as well as an example of good practice in the form of an exhibition of artworks based on research findings. The exhibition will bring students together with more than twenty artists and designers. This will involve offering guidance and advice from academics and external partners who have previously worked together successfully to translate research into engaging and impactful outputs. It will also give doctoral students an opportunity to make the connections which could help them emulate such successes themselves in the future.

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By attending this one day event, doctoral students will gain practical knowledge and skills in how to become a robust researcher who is better able to cope with the stresses of data-collection. It also provides an opportunity for them to learn about how to frame and develop their research in the next phase of their careers so as to make it appealing to funders, what the best strategies are for publishing findings from their doctoral research, and how to translate these findings in such ways as to make them accessible to and engaging for a public audience and for the purposes of having an impact beyond academia (e.g., influencing policy and practice). As such, the event is about PhD students and early career researchers assessing where they are in the present and helping them to get to where they want to be in the future.