North West Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership
My PhD has always been a bit unusual
Judit Fazekas, Postdoctoral Fellow, Psychology, University of Liverpool
As I’m (finally!) at the other side of my PhD, having defended my thesis this March, I thought I would tell you a bit about the life after. My PhD has always been a bit unusual – as soon as I arrived to Liverpool my primary supervisor took up a job at the amazing Max Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics (MPI). While this is the dream destination for all language researchers, it had a small downside from the point of view of my PhD: namely that it is in a completely different country! While working with an off-site supervisor might be the subject of a whole different blog post, this one is about what happened afterwards, when my dream also came true and I got to join Caroline in the MPI for a year after my PhD.
Read MoreLiverpool Fashion Summit
Liverpool Fashion Summit took place from the 9th to the 11th of September 2020, and was funded by the NWSSDTP via the Northern Fusion Fund. Postponed due to the pandemic, it was hosted online. As a student-led event, it provided a platform for businesses, consumers and academics to debate and discuss industry trends and best practice, raise awareness of the key barriers to change, and look to ourselves to explore the part we can all play.
What did you miss?
Attending a conference in COVID-19 times
Veronica Vienne Arancibia, Economics, University of Manchester, 2018 Cohort
A big part of our PhDs involves presenting our research in workshops, seminars and conferences. Unfortunately, they involve social interactions, so most of them were either cancelled or moved online. Although online conferences are a good alternative to show your work to wide audiences, they don’t do very well when it comes to networking. And, let’s face it, it can be a challenge to pay attention to a full day or more of Zoom webinars.
There are new formats, however, that adapt to the new normality and could be adopted permanently, because of the flexibility and benefits they offer.
5 Steps to Successfully Submitting your PhD during a Global Pandemic
Margot Tudor, Development and Humanitarianism in an Unequal World, University of Manchester, 2017 Cohort
Completing a PhD at any stage of life and circumstance is a significant achievement and demonstrative of an unwavering commitment to your field of scholarship. I was approaching the last six months of my PhD in March 2020 when lockdown was implemented across the UK. My original plan for these months was not entirely dissimilar to the restrictions of a national lockdown; my mug, library books, and desktop screen all waited for me on my desk in the PhD office and I planned to hunker down and get the job done. The main goals were to revise my four case study chapters and write my introduction and conclusion sections before my 31st June first draft deadline. I knew I would need to keep focused during these next months in order to submit by the end of my funding in September. However, when the global pandemic hit, things did not go entirely to plan and keeping focused whilst the world was on fire proved impossible at times.
North West Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership 