North West Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership
Being True to Your Commitments: Ontologies, Epistemologies and Methodologies PhD Symposium Aalborg University
Ragnhild Nordset, Business & Management, University of Liverpool (2020 Cohort)
What are your beliefs?
What you believe about the world impacts what you choose to see in it, how you choose to frame that and how you deal with (or not) the elements you exclude. As PhD researchers we are responsible for the lens that we use to navigate our noisy world which, aside from being a skill, is also a moral task. It matters that we question what underpins and drives our choices and what we believe to be true of the world we inhabit. “Do your research”, they say and I wonder what people believe that means? How many decisions have you already blindly made based on your underlying assumptions before you even start doing actual research?
Read MoreWellbeing and Research Consultancy Training in the Lake District
Camilla Woodrow-Hill, Psychology, University of Manchester (2020 Cohort)
This month I was fortunate enough to be offered a place on a Knowledge Exchange and Wellbeing Residential program. The program was organised by the NWCDTP and REALab but luckily was offered to NWSSDTP students too.
The program took place in Windermere in the Lake District. We stayed in a stunning hotel right by a lake and all food was included for the entire stay. There were around 20 of us completing the program in total, comprising PhD students from various universities in the North West studying a huge variety of topics.
Read MoreMy Difficult Language Training experience learning Mapuzugun in Buenos Aires
Dylan Bradbury, Language Based Area Studies, University of Manchester (2020 Cohort)
As part of fieldwork preparations in the second year of my PhD, I had the opportunity to carry out six months of Mapuzugun classes using the Difficult Language Training (DLT) funding provided by the NWSSDTP. These classes proved to have a great impact on my fieldwork, both in terms of the development of the thesis itself and in my experience researching abroad more generally.
Read MoreFieldwork in Mozambique and participation at an International Conference
Eliana Chavarría Pino, Health & Wellbeing, University of Manchester (2021 Cohort)
This was a very productive, exciting and stimulating summer. Since late June I travelled to Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique, for a field research stay. My PhD aims to evaluate the effect of public health expenditure on child and maternal health and care outcomes using Mozambique as a case study. During the visit, I held meetings with colleagues at the Ministry of Health, the National Institute of Health, and key staff at development agencies and International organisations working in the health space. These meetings were extremely useful and valuable for my research. I had the opportunity to validate preliminary analysis and assumptions, gather feedback to inform further analyses, and collect the latest data. I also attended national workshops sharing descriptive statistics on the latest Household Budget Survey and discussing aspects of the functioning of the health system, such as actions to improve coordination in the response and delivery of health programmes and services. Through informal conversations with people, I also gained a deeper understanding of the healthcare system and accounts of perceptions of how it works. Walking in the city and a rural area I could also see some health centres from the outside.
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North West Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership 