This session will address conducting academic research in industry and policy settings. It is intended to offer key guidance and advice about approaching industry and…
In this session, Catherine Owen will introduce the techniques and practice of modern ethnography with a candid look at how PhD candidates and early career…
This workshop focuses on the process of making research documentary and extending research horizon. It outlines the benefits of using visual methods and making a…
This Q&A session will address any questions or issues you would like to share regarding imposterism. We can interrogate together feelings of alienation and inadequacy,…
This workshop introduces students to systematic literature search on the Web of Science, analysing citation data, and citation network analysis for literature exploration. The primary purpose of this short course is to provide the skills and understanding necessary to pursue literature-based research projects. Originally designed for biomedical students at the University of Edinburgh, this course is now being made freely available for the SGSSS Summer School. The basic principles of review, systematic literature search, citation analysis, and the network analyses outlined throughout are generally transferable to most topics in the social sciences.
Repeated measures designs from longitudinal studies are useful methods for examining how traits or behaviours change over time, why and for who. They are an effective method for expanding upon cross-sectional and panel designs and can be used to help improve inferences in fields such as psychology, medicine, epidemiology, sociology, education and public health. This workshop is aimed at participants from any of those disciplines (or others) who are interested in examining how things change over time and why. This workshop would be particularly useful for participants who are interested in Secondary Data Analysis (SDA).
This is an informative, fun and interactive session that introduces you to what we mean by 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. Melanie Lovatt and Valerie Wright will then facilitate two interactive sessions - you can choose which one to take part in. One will focus on using fictional novels as a way to elicit new ways of thinking about the future. The other will consider how theatre can help to identify narratives of oppression and discrimination, and facilitate alternative narratives of resistance. By the end of the session you will have a greater understanding of how creative methods can generate new ways of sociological thinking, and how you might practically use them in your research.
This workshop will be led by the University of Edinburgh’s Jamie Pearce who is the Editor-in-Chief of the interdisciplinary journal Health & Place. It will also include experienced reviewers, journal editors and journal managers working for publishing companies. The workshop will be very informal, and much of the discussion will be facilitated through break-out groups, plenary discussion, and sharing our experiences.
The introduction of COVID-19 restrictions in March 2020 has resulted in a pivot from in-person, face-to-face teaching, to learning and teaching happening online. This change in format came with many opportunities, as well as challenges. Our training event seeks to develop and/or improve online teaching skills of postgraduate teaching assistants (PGTAs) in a collaborative, peer-to-peer learning environment. Our own practical experience stems from engaging undergraduates in weekly seminar discussions on social science concepts and data both in person, as well as online.
Want to build networks with the private and third sectors? Keen to get your research disseminated in policy and media? Interested in producing impact with other organisations?
Barry and Paul are two final year PhD students who have for the past year been working with organisations outwith the Academy on a range of projects. Their work has included authoring a UK Parliamentary report, reviews for the British Red Cross and evaluation work with grassroots organisations. They have also made policy impact with their academic research, with both having their work informing questions raised by MSPs at First Minister's Questions.
This workshop aims to create a space where we can discuss, with freedom and peer-support, a range of ethical issues that we could encounter during fieldwork, and a range of issues that make doing research more difficult. Some of the examples we draw upon may sound unusual, others will be very familiar. We will also how the traditional isolationist nature of PhD work, results in us individualising experience and internalising issues as a personal-failure. Given the context of academia, this workshop aims to offer possible frameworks of support.
Research design is a core component of every good research paper, irrespective of is theoretical approach or type of empirical evidence (quantitative or qualitative) to be collected and analysed. Its importance derives from its features: provides a structure to the analysis, makes data collection systematic, guides readers through the logic of the research enterprise, and increases the reliability and transparency of the research endeavour. This course aims at providing an overview of available types of research design for empirical studies in social sciences so that students can make an informed decision about what matches best their theoretical approach and methodological needs. By using a hands-on approach, the course will show how theories can be tested through different research designs with different types of data, will investigate the implications and suitability of research designs, and will reveal how these designs can be best presented to broader audiences.
Comparative case studies are a powerful research design to help test and build theories in all areas of social science. They help establish and test 'boundary conditions' as well as testing the limits of social theories in specific contexts. But they can be challenging to design and execute. Researchers can find themselves several stages into a comparative case design project without really having thought through what are the boundaries of the cases, what are the points of comparative similarity and difference, and what causal mechanisms we are 'looking for'. This can bring problems for the analytical and theory development stages of a project.
This session will take students through an approach to interpreting qualitative research based on the discourse-historical view of Ruth Wodak (and others). It will take students through a range of different examples of texts, asking them in each case to consider the persons and objects under consideration, their characteristics, arguments deployed by actors, and the discursive strategies being utilised by those speaking and acting. It therefore will aim to get students understanding the importance of both the empirical and theoretical context of the text(s) under consideration, how detailed textual analysis can help us achieve additional analytical depth over the discursive strategies being employed, and what discourse analysis can contribute to a research project.
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.
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.
During this session, we will discuss four key elements of conducting qualitative research in LMIC settings, using case studies and examples from real-world research we have led and been involved in Malaysia, South Africa, Malawi and Kenya.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
In this workshop we will consider a number of methodological considerations when designing and implementing a social survey including sampling, developing survey questions, handling sensitive topics, retrospective questions and dealing with challenges such as non-response. The session will include a practical opportunity to use Qualtrics although students will need to have access to that software.
Teaching quantitative methods for the first time can be a daunting task, particularly trying to strike the right balance between depth of detail, practical examples, and prior knowledge of the class. This session will offer a practical discussion around the realities of teaching quantitative methods from the undergraduate to post-graduate level. We will talk about best practices for achieving a productive learning environment, what you should expect from yourself, and what you might expect from your students.
This workshop draws on a pilot project from Dr Beth Cross at University of West of Scotland called Homestretch. Homestretch experiments with the possibility of offering an online supportive space. It is partly based on the theory that playful activities can sometimes prompt serious insights and discoveries at depth. These practices draw on mindfulness but equally are resonant with a shift in research practice that engages with critical social materialist and post humanist insights. It also draws on the principle that we learn best from our experiences when given time to process and share.
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