Introduction to Demography

Online via Microsoft Teams
Attendance: 29 / 46

In this course Dr Alan Marhsall will provide an introduction to demographic techniques and data. All students require is familiarity with Excel - the content is definitely introductory. The course is structured around analysing the demographic components of change (fertility, mortality and migration) and finishes with an introduction to the cohort component projection methodology.

Undertaking a Systematic Literature Review

Online
Attendance: 47 / 46

This session will be led by Dr Anna Robb, Dr Beth Hannah and Dr Alexia Barrable. It will focus on systematic approaches for literature reviews. The session will consist of an overview of the systematic literature process, followed by a presentation where three researchers will discuss how they have put this into their practice, ending with a Q&A session. ​

Working with Potentially Vulnerable Groups: Some Methodological and Ethical Considerations

Online via Zoom
Attendance: 46 / 46

This session will consider some of the key methodological and ethical issues that you might need to think about when working with potentially vulnerable groups. We will begin by considering the concept of vulnerability and what might make some of our participants vulnerable before going on to explore in detail some of the methodological and ethical safeguards we might put in place to ensure our research is as inclusive and participatory as possible.

Planning for your future: Insights from your strengths, values and PhD graduates

Online via Zoom
Attendance: 34 / 34

Over the last 12 months, we’ve all found ourselves in unfamiliar and uncertain situations. We’ve probably all learned a bit more about how we face challenges and what is important to us. In this workshop, you’ll have the chance to synthesise this learning, translate it into personal strengths and values and discuss what that means when thinking about your future post-PhD.

Life History Research: How History Shapes Lives

Online via Zoom
Attendance: 46 / 46

The workshop will consist of a synchronously delivered lecture followed by breakout groups in which participants will be able to relate issues raised in the presentation to their own research. Whether you are still at the research design stage or are busy with data analysis and whether or not you intend to undertake life history research after all, the session will help you reflect on rigour in qualitative interviewing, how we go from the individual to the more general, how we narrate our lives, and crucially how culture and history inflect research participants' narrations. Ultimately the session will aim to remind novice researchers of the critical dimension of qualitative research and how it can make visible social change and agency.

Decolonising our Practice in Qualitative (Health) Research

Online
Attendance: 40 / 46

During this session, we will hear from Johannah Keikelame, who will discuss her own work on decolonising research methodologies, how she came to think and write about these issues, and lessons learned from a qualitative research project she was involved in in Cape Town, South Africa.  This session will include a live Q and A session with Johannah, where students will have the opportunity to ask questions on this topic area to inform your own thinking and research practice.  In addition, we will discuss approaches to decolonising research and how it applies to all aspects of the research process, from conceptualisation to dissemination and sustainability of research.

SGSSS Summer School Pub Quiz

Online via Zoom

We will be hosting a quiz on Wednesday evening, 16th of June. Prizes will be up for grabs and the SGSSS team will contact all Summer…

Making Things Up As Ethical Practice

Queen Margaret University Queen Margaret University Way, Musselburgh
Attendance: 9 / 25

This workshop will introduce examples of ethnodrama, composite participants and ethical fictionalisation to discuss broader issues of representation of diverse participants’ stories when working with qualitative data.

Working with Industry Partners

Queen Margaret University Queen Margaret University Way, Musselburgh

In this workshop we will discuss what we mean by 'industry partners' and which partners may be relevant for participants' different research areas. We will discuss the value of engaging with industry partners, approaches to building partnerships and what success looks like with good partnership.

How to Evaluate the Causal Effect of Development Policy Interventions: The Control Function Approach

Queen Margaret University Queen Margaret University Way, Musselburgh
Attendance: 12 / 20

This training course provides doctoral students with the necessary methodological tools for policy evaluation. While policy-makers are interested in the causal effects of policy interventions, a perennial problem that makes such assessments difficult is endogeneity, for instance due to reverse causality.

Using Creative Methods in Qualitative Research

Queen Margaret University Queen Margaret University Way, Musselburgh
Attendance: 29 / 30

This is an informative, fun and interactive session that introduces you to creative methods and offers guidance on why, when and how you might use them in your research. It starts with an introduction to creative methods and how they relate to epistemological and ontological positions.

Producing Impact: applying your research skills outside the academy

Queen Margaret University Queen Margaret University Way, Musselburgh
Attendance: 16 / 60

Want to become more involved with the private and third sectors? Keen to get your research disseminated in policy and media? Interested in producing impact outwith the academy?

NVivo for Qualitative Data Analysis

Queen Margaret University Queen Margaret University Way, Musselburgh
Attendance: 25 / 25

In this workshop we will look at how to make the best use of NVivo in your qualitative data analysis. We will consider which NVivo tools will be most useful for your PhD study and you will see how to set up an NVivo project. We will also cover how to code your data and where to find help when using NVivo. 

Data visualisation using R, for researchers who don’t use R

Queen Margaret University Queen Margaret University Way, Musselburgh
Attendance: 18 / 20

We will provide a beginner's introduction to quantitative data visualisation using the statistical programming language R. We expect no prior knowledge of using R, this is meant for complete beginners, but more experienced users are welcome. Our workshop will be structured around a recent tutorial article from our department which provides an online resource for learning data visualisation using R.

Working with “vulnerable” groups

Queen Margaret University Queen Margaret University Way, Musselburgh
Attendance: 16 / 30

This session will explore some key methodological and ethical considerations around working with vulnerable groups.  The session will begin by unpacking and exploring the concept of vulnerability before going discuss methodological and ethical considerations drawing on examples from a range of research studies. 

Shared Dialogue Workshops in Multidisciplinary Research

Queen Margaret University Queen Margaret University Way, Musselburgh

Drawing on experiences from recent and current research projects this talk shall explore what a Shared Dialogue Workshop is, and why using them can be incredibly powerful in applied research projects.

Introduction to Machine Learning

Queen Margaret University Queen Margaret University Way, Musselburgh
Attendance: 4 / 20

Machine Learning has become a popular topic in the recent years. e.g., for designing recommendation systems used in YouTube or for building computer vision models used in self-driving cars. In this workshop you will learn some fundamental concepts of machine learning, e.g., model training and validation, hyper parameters tuning etc., and explore some of the mostly commonly used algorithms for both supervised and unsupervised learning, for example, random forest and k-means algorithm.

Feminist Methodologies and Practice

Queen Margaret University Queen Margaret University Way, Musselburgh
Attendance: 24 / 50

This session will introduce students to the ideology at the heart of feminist methodologies. Feminist methodologies take particular care to make research inclusive, to foreground the voices of experts and dismantle power imbalances between the researcher and the researched. These approaches come with a particular political understanding of the academy and the research process which we will negotiate.