North West Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership

Don’t Let Doubts Stop you Returning to Academia.

Sharon Cooksey, Business & Management, University of Liverpool (2022 Cohort)

So, you are in your 30’s or 40’s, and beyond and you discover a spark of curiosity and an inkling that you might want to pursue a research idea into a PhD, and it just won’t go away… but so many doubts are flying around your brain… ‘I will be too old, I will be the odd one out, what can I bring, I’ve forgotten everything I learnt in my undergrad degree, I won’t be accepted/good enough’, etc., etc…

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MidWest Conference on British Studies.

Amy Stanning, Economic and Social History, Lancaster University ( 2021 Cohort)

I was fortunate to be invited to present my research at the 71st Annual Midwest Conference on British Studies which was held in Toronto, Canada. The NWSSDTP kindly funded my travel expenses for the trip and gave me the opportunity to present my work for the first time to a North American audience.

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Navigating Gatekeepers, Adapting Research Methods, and Managing Ethical Challenges in a Politically Complex Place

Photograph of a cultural map of Mae Sot in a youth centre, showing both Myanmar and Thailand

Nay Myo Htet, Educational Research, University of Manchester (2021 Cohort)

Researching in complex, political environments pose unpredictable challenges for PhD researchers and academics in the humanities. My recent experience in Mae Sot, a border town between Myanmar and Thailand, offers some insights into navigating such challenging terrains. This blog post aims to share my journey of conducting fieldwork in a political hotspot, focusing on three crucial aspects: accessing vulnerable participants and working with gatekeepers, adapting research methods to fit participants’ circumstances, and managing ethical challenges.

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For the past year, I have been an Equity, Diversity, Inclusion (EDI) and Wellbeing Representative for the NWSSDTP

Eve Pennington, Economic & Social History, University of Manchester (2022 Cohort)

I am in my final year of a +3 studentship on the Economic and Social History pathway. My research explores the historical relationship between gender and state-sponsored urban development in late twentieth century Britain. I am particularly interested in how new built environments reflected and reinforced gender relations, whether women adhered to or subverted the roles prescribed by deterministic architecture and planning, and how gender intersected with other social relations such as class and race.

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