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For late sign ups here is the zoom link:

https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/94226642364?pwd=VGJPbzhjNE5rRFlxQWoxNTN3amUxdz09 Meeting ID: 942 2664 2364Passcode: 052998

An Introduction to Research Data Management Skills with Dr Curtis Sharma

Simply put, research data is anything that helps to eventually form the basis of your research output. The integrity of our research outputs therefore depends on the integrity of our data. This is one reason why Increased importance is being placed on research data management (RDM). Managing your research data well brings other benefits, however. It helps in structuring your research project, keeping your data safe and secure, making it easier to share data during and after your project, and it is simply good academic practice. In these sessions we will explore what we mean by RDM, looking at storage and backup, organisation, archiving, and sharing. In the first session we will work to achieve a strong basic understanding of RDM. In the second session, we’ll look at these in more detail. 

This is a workshop for PhD students who have reached the point where they need to consider what to do next after their doctorate. Provision from the Careers Service, the Postdoc Academy and the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences will highlight both academic and non-academic career options with Q&A sessions for students to explore ideas. There will be tea and coffee provided at the start, and a lunch at the end for students to have the opportunity to share plans with each other and there will be a session with some alumni who will discuss their internship/fellowship experiences. The aims of this session are for PhD students to: · Have a better understanding of how they can use their doctorate · Be aware what are the different pathways open to them both in academia and outside

This is a workshop for PhD students who have reached the point where they need to consider what to do next after their doctorate. Provision from the Careers Service and the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences will highlight both academic and non-academic career options with Q&A sessions for students to explore ideas. There will be a coffee and cake break for students to have the opportunity to share plans with each other and the session will finish with a panel of Cambridge Grand Challenges alumni who will discuss their fellowship/internship experiences.

10am to 10.45am: How to find the best fit in careers; Academic or Non-Academic?

10.45am to 11.30am: Going into academia - how to find fellowships and make grant applications

11.30am to 12pm: Tea/Coffee and time to talk individually with our speakers and each other

12pm to 1.30pm: Alumni Panel with Konstantina Stamati - an opportunity for you to question past PhD students

This workshop focuses on the why, where, when and how of training during your doctorate including how to integrate the training into your research and using a training needs analysis. This is a one hour online workshop provided by the ESRC DTP Doctoral Training Manager - joining details below:

Join Zoom Meeting https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/94770826488?pwd=ME1sVzRlNXVyRUIvcVJiaktwemdLQT09

Meeting ID: 947 7082 6488 Passcode: 507056

This is an event aimed at helping and supporting postgraduate students who have caring responsibilities, whether that is for a relative, friend or child.

This 2 hour online session aims to equip you with the tools and techniques required to effectively manage your time and research projects. Through interactive and practical exercises, we will cover how to prioritize tasks, manage your workload, and develop effective time management strategies that can be applied to any research project.

We will cover topics such as setting SMART goals, developing project timelines, and identifying and managing project risks. Additionally, you will learn how to identify time-wasters, manage interruptions, and optimize your work environment for maximum productivity.

See website for further details: https://ppd4phd.com/effective-project-management/

Please note that the course is taught using Zoom and you must have installed on your computer to participate.

A Zoom link will be sent to all participants before the event.

Coffee and Catch up at Pembroke College in the Nihon Room on Wednesday 22nd March, 11am to 1pm (coffee and cake will be available). In particular, I’d like to share with you your aspirations that you wrote down at our first induction in October 2021 (so long ago now!). It’s always interesting to reflect back on how our hopes from that first day have developed or perhaps they are still the same.

Peer-led Workshop

Ethics is critical but can often become procedural. Ethics can be embedded and enriching component of research but may fall to the margins as projects progress.

In this two-hour collaborative workshop we will give ourselves time to think deeply about ethics. We will dedicate time to reviewing and unpicking conventional understandings of ethical review procedures, before using rich and reflective group discussions to build ethical frameworks coherent to our own research projects. We will pool resources, insights and perspectives while trying to expand our understandings of ethics beyond the data gathering phase of research.

In particular, we will focus on how we position, view and care for those we are researching with, our research projects, those who may engage with our research outputs and ourselves. By the end of the workshop, participants will have considered whether and how to reconcile institutional, personal and theoretical concerns related to their own ethical considerations.

Brief bio: Samantha Hulston is a former ESRC DTP recipient at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. She specialises in conducting research with young children within educational settings and is interested in how situated ethical concerns expand and overlap in such settings.

PLEASE NOTE VENUE HAS CHANGED TO THE MARSHALL ROOM IN THE UNIVERSITY CENTRE

The first of two peer-led workshops in February will be provided by Joanna Watterson who will share some of her own personal experiences of fieldwork challenges and successes and create space for guided small group discussions. Fieldwork can be an incredibly rewarding experience. It can also be incredibly challenging. This session will cover some important elements of preparing for fieldwork, including making contingency and safety plans.

There is no preparatory work necessary for this session. After the session, you will be provided with various reading materials relating to the topics discussed.

It is important to note some content warnings for this session. While we will not go into detail, some distressing topics will be discussed. These include sexual harassment, violence, trauma, mental illness, and queerphobia.

Joanna Watterson is a third year PhD student in the Department of Geography. Her research interests are urban governance, infrastructure, social and environmental justice, and inequality. She feels strongly about making academic spaces and praxes more diverse and inclusive, particularly for gendered bodies.

https://ppd4phd.com/managing-fieldwork/

You may be interested in attending a forthcoming workshop 'Managing Vicarious Trauma as a Researcher' https://training.cam.ac.uk/event/5105735

Dr Julia Hayes will lead this workshop focusing on imposter syndrome. She will explore what it is and how it can affect the feelings and performance of people on a day to day basis.

The session will give participants the opportunity to reflect upon the ways in which imposter feelings affect them, and discussion around the ways in which it can be managed.

Participants will leave the session with a greater awareness of the situations that increase their imposter feelings and have strategies to manage them.

Dr Hayes is an Educational Psychologist, disability consultant and trainer who put her career on hold to complete a PhD at the University of Cambridge.

This workshop will be 1.5 hours and will cover the following aspects:

• What is research related trauma/vicarious trauma?
• What can you do to try and prevent research related trauma?
• What might be some of the signs of trauma to look out for?
• When and where to go for support if needed?

The workshop will be led by Margaret Bailey and Phyllis Smith, counsellors from the University Counselling Service.

We will start at 12.30pm and a buffet lunch will be available for you to access throughout the session.

Please note in order to ensure the workshop meets your needs and expectations, we would be grateful if you could complete a short form prior to attending https://cambridge.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_b7rwpIxR6SvnH94

How do you protect time to focus and manage workload? In this 1 hour session delivered by Tiny Pause you will learn to:

• Establish a method that works for you to enhance focus for the most important work (Deep Work)

• Reduce distraction and prioritise more effectively

• Establish daily 'Protective Pause', to relieve stress, reduce self criticism and strengthen resilience - mini mindfulness

• Create the space to recognise your achievements each day - increase self awareness and confidence

This will be a live webinar, delivered by Sam Thorogood from Tiny Pause. Sam combines proven neuroscience & mindfulness based techniques into useful daily habits. The overall aim will be to help attendees convert proven techniques into useful habits, as well as enhance focus, reduce stress and strengthen resilience.

This 1-hour webinar is delivered by UK mental health specialist charity MIND, and will be a brilliant opportunity to explore the key aims below:

• 1. understand what we mean by the term ‘mental health’
• 2. be able to identify common mental health problems
• 3. understand the effect stress has on our mental health and wellbeing
• 4. know how to look after our wellbeing
• 5. know how to make a wellbeing plan for ourselves or others
• 6. know where to get further help.

This is a supported group for PhD students who are managing caring responsibilities alongside their studies. It will be co-facilitated by the Inclusive Learning and Development Manager and a current PhD student who is also managing a caring role.

Caring can include a wide range of experiences and responsibilities and involve providing support for both children and adults.

This is an online event. Please join using this zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/92147866974?pwd=d0lsWVNSelRvaWsxSW1OOGF5VHRIQT09

See this web page for further information https://ppd4phd.com/phd-students-carers/

This is a supported group for PhD students who are part-time. It will be co-facilitated by the Inclusive Learning and Development Manager for the ESRC DTP and SHSS and a current part-time PhD Student within the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences. This is a space to recognise the challenges of being part-time and the support that is currently in place, discuss if it is enough or if there can be other provision in place.

Unfortunately we will need to postpone this session to Easter Term. Anyone who has signed up will be notified of a new date.

Research impact can be defined as a “demonstratable contribution” made by research towards "society and the economy”. It can take various forms, including changes in understanding, developments in methods, shaping of policies and shifts in behaviours. Yet, the word ‘impact’ can be burdened by assumptions and connotations of a particular range of research ‘outcomes’.

This workshop aims to question these assumptions and connotations regarding what impact should or could look like within social science research. In so doing we will construct nuanced understands of how impact may relate to our own projects as well as the theories, methods and values informing our projects.

Brief bio: Samantha Hulston is a former ESRC DTP recipient at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. She specialises in conducting research with young children within educational settings and the re-imagined impacts this might bring.

Questions, (a lack of) Answers, and Navigating a Persistently Changeable Field

Being a PhD student means you will probably spend around three or four years managing changes and adjusting research and funding, which can be a stressful and difficult time. If you remain in academia, this could continue. Professor Michelle Ellefson addresses these difficulties from a range of perspectives and aims to provide you with ways to cope living within an uncertain structure during your doctoral studies.

Cambridge ESRC DTP is pleased to offer a training session with our annual lecture speaker Professor Pete Fussey Training will take place on Thursday 10th November at 2pm in the Nihon Room at Pembroke College. We are delighted that prior to his talk at 5pm (in the Old Library at Pembroke College), Professor Fussey will be running a workshop focusing on working in challenging research environments. Drawing on his experience of researching in difficult to access environments – including among organised criminal actors in London, senior security practitioners and in conducting ethnographies of covert surveillance practices – Professor Fussey will lead this interactive workshop to support doctoral students facing some of these issues. In doing so, this session will cover a range of relevant issues including sensitivities, ethics, responsibilities to participants and strategies for engagement. Students are also encouraged to contribute their own experiences to the workshop and a reflection of the challenges they have faced.

Professor Fussey’s research focuses on surveillance, digital sociology, algorithmic justice, human rights, intelligence oversight, technology and policing, and urban studies. He has published widely across these areas. He is a director of the Centre for Research into Information, Surveillance and Privacy (CRISP). Professor Fussey is a regular commentator in national and international media and he has worked with and advised central and regional governments in the UK, Europe and Asia on a number of issues including the regulation of surveillance, public order policing and the security and social implications of urban mega-events.

Dr Pallawi Sinha focuses on reflection in research. By sharing some of her own experiences working with some of the most vulnerable communities in India, Dr Sinha explains how central reflexivity is in research. The workshop considers how deeply invested we each are in our research questions and the very individual ‘toolkits’ we bring to our research, grounded in our life histories, to build understanding of how reflection and researcher-reflexivity confront and overcome incongruities, disparities and barriers that underscore research.

Dr Pallawi Sinha will deliver a 45 minute seminar for all students. There will then be an opportunity for a 30 minute group session at which we invite students who wish to engage and actively participate.

This webinar is aimed at all ESRC DTP cohorts. The information and advice will be focused around managing your studentship in relation to time planning, managing your health, and understanding how your ESRC funding works. In particular, UKRI research councils are limited in their flexibility around extensions and it is important that all DTP PhD researchers are aware of these limitations but also know about the other resources they can potentially utilise at Cambridge to help them through the three years of their doctorate.

We encourage everyone to attend. In addition, anyone who has health difficulties should come along to understand how this could impact on their PhD timeline and how planning at an early stage could be helpful.