Community Blogs

One of the benefits (read: curses) of having to work from home for an extended period of time is that your breakfasts, lunchtimes, mid-morning and afternoon breaks, your post-lunch coffees, your inspiration/exasperation-driven “pauses for thought”, the odd boring meeting etc. can be punctuated with a spot of light-hearted television. (Note

Presentation to the Educational Inequalities Conference, Erasmus MaCE, University of Cumbria, 4&5 June, 2020 Introduction My name is Jess Anderson and I am doing a Collaborative ESRC-funded PhD with Renfrewshire Council, in Scotland. I’m based in the School of Education at the University of Strathclyde. I’ve worked in education, particularly

Hey, if you are reaching this first sentence you must want to learn more about blogging; or you’ve read my writing before and I just spark something you enjoy. It occurred to me this week, people may actually read my material because they absolutely hate the things I write about

Parents were asked, ‘Does anyone who chose to use schools feel their children have blossomed whilst learning at home?’. Within less than 24hrs there were over 200 responses. Within 48hrs over 400 responses. The question asked parents to reflect upon the last 5 months and identify if anything had changed

The Teenager Living with Covid-19 Living in lockdown as a home-schooled 13yr old. “Lockdown, a word that, just last year, had a very different meaning. Now, when people hear the word ‘lockdown’ they think of social distancing, they think of the vulnerable who are shielding, and they think of the

Hello Everyone, Covid-19 may have changed the way we are conducting our research, driving our in-person interviews to online platforms or telephones, pushing us to discover new ways to approach observation-based research etc. My own experience has been slightly less affected by Covid-19 because I was still in my first

Home Education is not the same as the Home Learning that parents are attempting to undertake during the Lockdown of 2020. There is some virtue in the numerous online comments from existing Home Educators who repeatedly tried to distinguish themselves from the parents of Lockdown by offering the term ‘Home

Blog post for LGBT History Month, February 2020, on the Interdisciplinary Research in Sexual Health (IReSH) Network Scotland website. https://www.iresh.org.uk/2020/02/

Ever since SGSSS started promoting their internship scheme I was gutted when receiving calls for expressions of interest. Pretty much every position focused, understandably, on Scotland while my PhD in human geography focused on international development issues! As such, you can imagine my surprise, and delight, when in early September

We are indeed aware of some spatial forces behind our actions, or for that matter, inactions. No one has ever doubted how doors enable us to move through, a possibility that a solid wall robs us from. In fact, we are so intrinsically adapted to architectural manipulations, no one is

I’m delighted to have had the opportunity to contribute to the SGSSS Cohort Building Programme this month. The student pitches and presentations demonstrated huge impact and productivity on their projects but also demonstrated the challenge of doing a PhD. I was asked to share some thoughts on maintaining motivation to

The first time I heard about the SPA conference, I was not sure whether my research would fit in. My PhD focuses on the practice of community development. It compares the effect of approaches aimed at helping people “navigate the system” to those approaches aimed at helping people “change the system” to see which better advances the well-being of communities

North of Sonderborg, alongside the Alssund, the gentle farmland of Jutland stretches into the horizon. Fields of early autumn colours keep small patches of woodland company as the summer comes to a close with a final, and intense, hurrah. Deer move freely between the grasses and the trees, ignoring the

PhD ‘Must-knows’ In late August I attended a summer school in Denmark run by the Big Data Centre for Environment and Health (BERTHA). The lessons I learned in those few days changed how I perceive myself, academia, and the potential impact my research could have on the world. Lesson 1:

At the time of agreeing to help facilitate the Advanced Oral History Theory and Practice training programme at the Scottish Oral History Centre (SOHC) based at the University of Strathclyde, along with my colleague and mentor Arthur McIvor, Director of the SOHC and my supervisor Erin Jessee, I had not realised how incredibly fruitful and humbling it was

On a chilly November day just over two years ago, I sat in a room which reeked of excitement and fear.  It was emanating from me, and possibly the rest the new intake of ESRC-funded PhD students who sitting with me at the SGSSS induction event. In those early days, we hadn’t