Summer School

This is a reflective session on navigating ethics, and dealing with trauma, vulnerability and emotions in research.

This workshop will introduce you to the arguments for why we need to improve our research practices in quantitative social science research, and you will learn skills which will help you to promote the transparency and reproducibility of your statistical research.

You will have the chance to hear about the Researcher Access Service, a new service which was launched in April 2024 and provides a streamlined approvals process for accessing certain datasets, and how RDS are making synthetic datasets available for research.

As you get started on your PhD journey, this session will introduce you to some strategies and techniques for managing your research project, which will ultimately support your wellbeing.

We will use the example of the work of the Scottish Poverty and Inequality Research Unit to reflect on the ways in which we can use social science research to shape Scottish (and beyond) society for the common good.

Join the SGSSS Research Impact Team and the Scottish Government to find out more about the opportunities of the SGSSS internship scheme. This session will draw on the real world experiences of hosts and former interns to share the experience of completing an internship as a PhD student.

In this session we will explore how to ask questions in a way that enable the people we are listening to. We will focus on the dangers of asking questions in a way that is laden with values or where the researcher runs the risk of presuming that they already know the answers.

This workshop will teach you how natural experiments can be used in the social sciences as a tool to provide stronger evidence for causal connections between variables than in observational studies.

This session will introduce and consider the use of focus groups and reading groups as a distinctive method of qualitative research.

In this session, we will introduce the core concepts and metrics of Social Network Analysis, including centrality measures, network level metrics (i.e. density, centralisation), and sub-group metrics.

This session provides a practical guide for PhD researchers planning overseas fieldwork, focusing on preparation, logistics, and ethical responsibilities.

In this workshop, students will learn to navigate the submission and review stage of the academic publication process, including how to interact with journal editors and reviewers.

The course draws on recent work around research integrity, notably from the Economic and Social Research Council but also from experts working in the forefront of the field. As well as explaining what we mean by research integrity, we will explore why it is important by thinking about the consequences where integrity standards are not met.

Keynote delivered by Dr Karen Gregory, Digital sociologist and ethnographer, The University of Edinburgh This talk will explore three research projects whose methodological approaches place…

In this session we introduce and reflect upon the role of multilevel models in applied social research, and provide practical training materials which demonstrate ways of running multilevel models in survey data analysis scenarios.

This all day course is designed to be gentle introduction to the basics of bivariate analysis and regression analysis in the open-source software RStudio.  

This workshop offers a creative and hands-on guide to participatory research approaches and methods. By sharing our own research experiences, we will reflect on the different forms that participatory research can take.

In this one-day course you will learn how to apply computational methods for the processing and analysis of textual data. Using Python and R, you will develop skills in preparing textual data for computational analysis; and core methods of text data analysis (e.g., sentiment analysis, topic modelling).

Led by Dr Bridget Bradley, University of St Andrews In this workshop you will gain a detailed introduction to ethnography from a trained anthropologist who…

This session will map the socio-historical context of DA, from its roots in semiology and through the ethnomethodology that characterized much 1970s social research. Theory will be explored, particularly contributions from Foucault around power.

Come along to this drop-in session to meet Lynne and her herd of alpacas - feed them snacks, take them for a walk around the green, and learn more about their lives on a smallholding in the Scottish Borders.

In this short session, we will critically explore how incorporating ‘more-than-human’ viewpoints and experiences into social research can yield richer accounts of social life and open up new possibilities for addressing contemporary social challenges.

In this workshop, I will explore in more depth the concept of the ‘hidden curriculum’, what it is, what it entails in practice and why it is inherent in the doctoral journey.

Directed by Dr Itandehui Jansen, Screen Academy Scotland at Edinburgh Napier University We are excited to host a special screening of Itu Ninu (2023), an…

This session offers a space to reflect on the doctoral journey and explore the PhD as an emotional and embodied process, unique and personal to each student. Through gentle movements, mindfulness practices and reflection exercises, the attendees will be invited to consider their academic journey beyond notions of output, career trajectory and destination.