North West Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership
Internship with Milton Keynes City Discovery Centre
David Mountain, Planning and Environment, University of Manchester, 2017 Cohort
Thanks to the NWSSDTP Internship scheme, I spent my summer in Milton Keynes – the famed land of roundabouts and concrete cows. I had learnt that the grid layout in Central Milton Keynes, and its central street, Midsummer Boulevard, are orientated along the line of the sun on midsummer’s day, and this combination of modernism with ‘60s hippy spiritualism had sparked my curiosity. My presumption was that if any of the original architects of MK were still around, I’d find them on the night of the summer solstice somewhere along Midsummer Boulevard. Sadly this didn’t work out, but I had much more luck attending an evening nature walk in a rainy wood run by the MK Natural History Society: this was where I began to get to know some very welcoming and genuine characters who maintain what is between them a substantial oral history of the development of Milton Keynes, some of which is now getting written down.
Interdisciplinary Event : ‘Studying Gender in the Wake of #MeToo’
This funded Interdisciplinary event was organised by Sofia Doyle, Marion Greziller, Louise Wylie (Politics) and Abigail Bleach and Tania Shew (English), University of Manchester.
The event was a one day conference and activism day on International Women’s Day 8th March 2019, titled ‘Studying Gender in the Wake of #MeToo’. The event brought together activists, PhD students, early career researchers and members of the public to discuss issues pertinent to gender and the academy. The event included a roundtable on Women’s Experiences in Academia, and two panel sessions entitled ‘Resisting Institutional Violence’ and ‘Research and Activism Across Europe’. After these sessions, the day concluded with a feminist zine making workshop run by a local feminist activist and zine making specialist, where we explored alternative ways to represent our research and personal experiences of gender, the university, and the #MeToo movement.
Pilot studies, planning and preparation prevents poor PhD performance – the value of piloting research methods
Tamsin Fisher, Health and Wellbeing, Keele University, 2017 Cohort
Young people’s well-being and autotelic practices: a narrative and go-along inquiry of youth activities
The research process so far has been a rollercoaster of emotions and progress, though I am sure that I am not alone in this. Stepping into the second year of a PhD is daunting but exciting as preparation for data collection is underway and there is hope that the answers to the questions become nearer. For many, the start of the year will be filled with ethics and one can only hope that it takes one attempt! My ethics, however began back in March… 6 months into the PhD and a little earlier than most!
Welcome – and welcome back – to all our NWSSDTP Students!
The new NWSSDTP Student Handbook for 2019/20 is now live and can be found here. This should be your first source of information about your studentship. Please don’t hesitate to email us at nwssdtp@liv.ac.uk if you have any queries after reading this information. However, please note that your institutional Administrative Contacts are best placed to answer queries about registration, tuition fees and studentship payments – as these are primarily handled at an institutional level.
Dates are now set for the first Methods X Stream meetings of the academic year. Further information about the Methods X Programme, and the meeting dates, can be found here. If you have not yet identified your choice of Methods X Stream, you will receive an email shortly prompting you to do so.
Our NWSSDTP Coordinator, Dr Julie McColl, will shortly be launching a new monthly NWSSDTP Newsletter. This will include details of upcoming events and funding opportunities, as well as profiling individual NWSSDTP students and reporting on recent NWSSDTP activity. Keep an eye out for this landing in your inboxes shortly, and do get in touch with Julie if you have an idea for a blogpost to feed into the newsletter.
Finally, all that remains is to wish you all a successful 2019/20 academic year!
Hayley Meloy, NWSSDTP Manager
North West Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership 