North West Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership

Symposium : (Il)liberal Nation Projection Through Sport, Culture, Entertainment, and International Broadcasting

Callum McCloskey (1st year PhD student at University of the West of Scotland)

On the afternoon of Wednesday 19th October, I travelled to Manchester with colleagues Professor Gayle McPherson and Solomon Ilevbare, a fellow PhD student.

After checking in to our hotel, we headed out for a bite to eat in Chinatown, sampling a ‘Hot Pot’- safe to say some can handle spice more than others! After dinner, we retired to the hotel, in preparation for an early start.

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Safeguarding Children in the Digital Age Conference

Daisy Harvey, Health & Wellbeing, Lancaster University (2020 Cohort)

I recently attended the Safeguarding Children in the Digital Age online conference, which included two afternoons of talks related to the threats that young people may encounter online and how online safety can be improved. For me, this conference demonstrated how the research that is conducted at an academic level can be implemented in practice and demonstrated the importance of knowledge sharing beyond the institutional level.  I learned a lot about how young people explore their identities online and the types of content that they might be exposed to and was particularly interested in how linguistic analysis can help to identify online harms such as grooming, radicalisation and misogyny. The conference provided a lot of insight into the difficulties faced by parents and educators as the boundaries between the online and offline realm become more and more blurred, and also suggested methods for developing resilience and technology-based solutions to improve online safety. I attended the conference because I’m interested in pursuing a career related to countering online harms and wanted to understand how my research methodology aligns with the research and work taking place beyond academia. It was a really valuable experience and provided me with new perspectives that will be useful when thinking about the direction of my research and life after my PhD, and it was really inspiring to hear about all of the amazing projects that people are working on internationally to try to make the world a safer place.  

My overseas institutional visit to Case Western Research University

Jingwen Zhang, Social Statistics, University of Manchester (2020 Cohort)

From the end of September to November 2022, I visited Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in the United States funded by the NWSSDTP (Overseas institutional visits/OIV scheme). This visit was one of the most fruitful and valuable experiences that I have had since my PhD started. In this blog, I would like to share some tips for the application process and my experiences during the visit.  

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OIV Blog – French Institute of Pondicherry

Charlotte Evans, Economic & Social History, Lancaster University ( 2020 Cohort)

It was around 5 AM local time when I stepped out of Chennai International Airport, bombarded by taxi drivers asking where they could take me. I searched the crowd for my name on a placard as the sun rose above the city. Here I was, in the state of Tamil Nadu, South India. I blinked and exhaled, the chaos and noise of the city waking up around me. After beginning my 1+3 PhD studentship during the pandemic and not even being able to visit my CASE partner: the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh for the first few months of my studies, this trip had always felt very far away.

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