Cambridge ESRC DTC: Induction and get-together - Welcome (back) to Cambridge

This session will be hosted by Professor Loraine Gelsthorpe, Cambridge ESRC DTC Director.  New ESRC DTC students will hear about the opportunities available to them and have the chance to meet the current ESRC DTC student representatives.  ESRC DTC students from previous cohorts will join at 17.45.

This event will be a good opportunity for ESRC DTC students across all cohorts to meet and share experiences. Hope you can join us! 

This event is aimed at second and third years in particular but is open to all DTC students who are not in their first year.  There will be some important information about changes to the ESRC DTC training programme and other opportunities discussed. Please note that this is a required attendance event. Please RSVP to esrcdtc@admin.cam.ac.uk as soon as possible. A light lunch will be served.

DigiHealth UK: Transforming Healthcare Delivery will focus on how health services can bridge the gap between the current pressures on the system and the plans for the NHS to become a world leader in the development and use of technology in health and social care.

• Have you considered how health services can bridge the gap between the current pressures on the system and the plans for the NHS?
• What can you learn from key digital innovations that could finally transform the future of health and care in England?
• Could this conference help progress the research you are currently working on?

Full details are available at: http://www.digihealthuk.co.uk/?utm_source=S2+DIGIHEALTH+UK+ING+AB+1+PERS+01.08&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DigiHealth+UK#register

Pre-conference workshops:

• Mini-seminar on PhD skills
• Roundtable session on participants' own research projects
• Workshop A: Introduction to IRT: Scaling and DIF (by Leslie Rutkowski & Johan Braeken)
• Workshop B: Using multilevel modelling techniques in educational research and evaluation (by Leonidas Kyriakides & Charalambos Y. Charalambous)

Date: 26-27 September 2016

Registration fees: 150 NOK for EARLI JURE members, 340 NOK for others

Main conference:

The conference is aimed at gathering state-of-the-art research on differential accountability and effectiveness, and how this can inform and enhance school improvement in order to promote not only quality but also equity in education.

Date: 28-30 September 2016

Full details are available at: http://www.uv.uio.no/cemo/english/conferences/earli-sigs-18-23/

Registration closes on: 8 August 2016

The 2016 PublicHealth@Cambridge Showcase event, Political Economy of Public Health will now take place on 6^th September 2016 at Murray Edwards College.

Political economy of public health refers to research aimed at understanding the economic, political, social and historical forces which shape contemporary public health issues and our responses to them. We have a great line up of guest speakers for the event including Anna Gilmore (Bath), Sarah Hawkes (UCL), David Stuckler (Oxford), Larry King (Cambridge) and Martin McKee (LSHTM).

For more information and to register, please visit:

http://www.publichealth.cam.ac.uk/political-economy-public-health-2016-network-showcase-event-6th-september/

Public Health Workshop: Insights into the Social Sciences in and of Public Health

This event will take place on Wednesday 27^th July from 10 -1pm, and will include talks on an introduction to public health, researching practices for public health, and children’s mental health in public health policy, to name just  a few. Lunch will be provided and the event will take place at the Strangeways Research Laboratory, Worts Causeway, Cambridge, CB1 8RN.

If you would like to attend this workshop please email esrcdtc@admin.cam.ac.uk as soon as possible to reserve your place.

The Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS) invites members of the scientific community and those interested in this stage of life to take part in this consultation event to help determine the content of the Age 60 Survey of the 1958 British birth cohort.

About the event

Delegates from the scientific community, government departments, members of the third sector and other stakeholders are invited to give their ideas and discuss scientific priorities for the data collection instruments for the Age 60 Survey of the National Child Development Study (NCDS).

Submissions to the online survey consultation that took place from April-June 2016 will also be summarised.

 Speakers

• Alissa Goodman, Principal Investigator of NCDS, Centre for Longitudinal Studies
• David Bann, Co-Investigator of NCDS, Centre for Longitudinal Studies
• Gabriella Conti, Co-Investigator of NCDS, Centre for Longitudinal Studies
• James Nazroo, University of Manchester

The Age 60 Survey provides the opportunity to collect a range of information from study members to aid the understanding of ageing across multiple life domains. It has the potential to inform a wide range of policies relating to work, health, relationships, and civic participation. 

The survey, which is scheduled for 2018, will involve a 75-minute face-to-face interview covering the following three broad themes:

• Health, wellbeing and cognition: including topics such as physical health, mental health, medical care, health behaviours (e.g. smoking, drinking, diet and exercise), and cognitive function
• Finances and employment: including topics such as work, income, wealth (savings and debts, pensions and housing), retirement plans, and education
• Family, relationships and identity: including topics such as social networks, relationships with partners, parents, children, friends, neighbourhood, social capital, social and political participation, attitudes and values, and religion.

We will also discuss priorities for the inclusion of objective measures of health as it is possible that collection of such measures may be feasible.

As we come to the close of the year, we would like to invite all ESRC DTC students to an end of term social event at Pembroke College.

Please join us for wine, nibbles and the opportunity to share your reflections on the outcome of the EU Referendum.

Please RSVP to: esrcdtc@admin.cam.ac.uk by noon on Thursday 30 June

The 4^th LCSS PhD Methodology conference will focus on four particular themes: Research Design, Methodologies, Methods and Data Analysis in Social Sciences and Humanities.

Keynote Speakers:

Prof Lisa Webley, Professor of Empirical Legal Studies, University of Westminster, UK

Dr Nicole Janz, Research Methods Associate, University of Cambridge, UK

Papers are invited on the four conference themes above. If you are interested in presenting at the conference, please submit your abstract of 500 to 1000 words before 1^st March 2016.

'Real world research': an opportunity to explore challenges and creativity in addressing social research problems

Tuesday 31 May 2016

10.30-15.30 (with coffee from 10.00)
Room B3, Institute of Criminology

This one day ESRC DTC workshop will be led by Mark Liddle, the Managing Director of an independent consulting organisation which has worked for many years with a range of government and non-government organisations on research design and evaluations (both within and outside the UK).
 
The workshop will involve a short talk about general principles of evaluation research from Mark Liddle, and then participants will be divided into small interdisciplinary groups to prepare research and evaluation designs - utilising issues drawn from the real world of social policy. In the afternoon, each group will present its design/evaluation proposal and receive feedback from Mark.
 
Lunch will be provided. To register for this event, please contact us on esrcdtc@admin.cam.ac.uk

Hosted by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS), this session will introduce the study to both first-time and more experienced data users, focusing on the most recent data from the mixed mode age 55 survey.

The webinar will cover:

• Introduction to the 1958 British birth cohort and what’s new in the age 55 survey
• How to access the data
• Documentation available
• About the NCDS sample, including issues of non-response and attrition
• Using the mixed-mode data from the age 55 survey

Speakers include Brian Dodgeon, CLS Research Fellow, Matt Brown, NCDS Survey Manager and Tarek Mostafa, CLS Research Officer.

Accessing the webinar

Registered delegates will receive detailed joining instructions closer to the date on how to join the webinar session.

Cambridge PhD Clinic: Time management - learn to beat the procrastination!

Have you ever wondered where all the time went? Do you feel stressed because you feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything you want to do? Do you procrastinate? If your answer is “yes” to at least one of these questions, then we highly recommend that you register for our upcoming workshop on time management.

The next PhD Clinic workshop will focus on improving your time managing skills. It will be very interactive, and Polly Brown from the University Counselling Service will be guiding us throughout. She will help us to identify unhelpful thought patterns and behaviour that lead to poor time management (e.g. fears, perfectionism, procrastination). From there, we will identify strategies that can help us change these unhelpful ways of thinking and behaving, and how to actually implement them. We will finish with an open discussion/Q&A. In other words, you can expect to walk out of this workshop with some new insights and tools to improve your time management! You’ll also get a free lunch, and a golden opportunity to meet like-minded students in the social/cognitive/language sciences. 

Registration closes: 19 May 2016

Speaker: Professor Dame Anne Glover, former Chief Scientific Adviser to the President of the European Commission (2012-2015)

In her talk, Dame Anne will examine what mechanisms could be the most effective in the European Commission for delivering evidence-based decision making.

Chair: Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice Chancellor, University of Cambridge

The Cultures of the Digital Economy (CoDE) conference will be hosted in Cambridge in 2016 with the broad conference theme of ‘Case Studies on Creative Communication’. 

Further details, including the full call for abstracts, is available at: http://www.anglia.ac.uk/cultures-of-the-digital-economy/conference-2016 and on the CoDE conference poster.

Conference attendance fees: £45 standard and £35 student

Professor Ben Bowling

The Emerging Crimmigration Control System

Professor Bowling is Acting Executive Dean and  Professor of Criminology & Criminal Justice at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London. His research examines practical, political and legal problems in policing and the connections between local and global police power.

You can read Professor Bowling's biography here.

This lecture is free and open to interested researchers in the social sciences. To reserve your place, please visit:

https://cambridge-esrc-dtc-annual-lecture-2106.eventbrite.co.uk

Speaker: Jeremy Purseglove, author of "Taming the Flood: Rivers, Wetlands and the Centuries-old Battle against Flooding"

Jeremy Purseglove explores the cause of flooding in Britain and questions whether government policy on flood prevention is fit for purpose.

The ESRC DTC programme of events (and also other opportunities, such as internships) is expanding and during the Focus Group we’d really like to hear your views on the following questions:

• How would you like to hear about events and other ESRC DTC opportunities?
• What would encourage you to attend events and participate in other ESRC DTC opportunities?
• What makes it difficult for you to attend events?
• Are there any issues which affect your participation in additional activities like internships and placements?
• What topics, themes and activities would you like to suggest for the ESRC DTC programme for 2016/17?

This is also an opportunity for you to give any additional feedback on the ESRC DTC.

We hope the Focus Group will be a great opportunity for you to share your views on the ESRC DTC programme and also a chance for you to network and catch up with each other. 

The Research Ethics Group of the Academy of Social Sciences and the NSMNSS network invite abstracts and poster/video submissions for a one-day conference that aims to further develop and explore the ethics of social science research using social media.

Full details about the conference, including a Call for Abstracts, can be found here:
https://www.acss.org.uk/developing-generic-ethics-principles-social-science/ethics-and-social-media-research-conference/

Academic writing requires clarity, brevity and style if it is to communicate effectively. As George Orwell wrote, ‘Good prose is like a windowpane’. He also said that writers are vain, selfish and lazy, so we may have our work cut out discussing how to do it well! This workshop will give practical advice to PhD students of any discipline. So come and listen to insights about overcoming writer's block and translating thoughts into written work.

Louise Foxcroft is a historian and currently the Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at Magdalene College,Cambridge. She specialises in medical perceptions of the human body and how these relate to our present day experience. Her sixth book will be published this autumn and she has written for The Times, Independent, Observer, Guardian, New Scientist online, BBC Magazine online, etc. She has been a guest on ITV, BBC and RTE, as well as several BBC Radio programmes including The Medicalisation of Normality, Inside Science, Woman’s Hour, etc.

There will also be a chance to network with like-minded students coming from a range of disciplines within Cambridge Language Sciences and the ESRC DTC over wine and nibbles. 

To register please go to http://cambridgephdclinic.com/. Please register early to avoid disappointment as previous events have been oversubscribed. If the event is oversubscribed we will operate a waiting list. Registration will close on the 10th of March. 

At Smart Cities: Shaping the Future at Manchester Conference Centre (Manchester) on 15th March 2016 you can benefit from hands-on experience of new technologies with the opportunity to explore the smartest way towards the urban revolution through unique interactive sessions. Smart city experts from across the world will be sharing with you the most innovative ways to use technology and data to make life in the city safer, smarter and more sustainable.

For more details and to register, please visit:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/smart-cities-shaping-the-future-registration-19423386873?utm_source=P1.0%20SMART%203.12

Government research councils and other funding bodies increasingly have expectations that the research they fund will deliver economic, social or cultural impact as well as academic reach. Interdisciplinarity is often considered as a means to facilitate impact. This workshop will be an opportunity for you to explore ways in which your research could have an impact beyond your field of study and outside academia. You will have the chance to explore how to achieve different kinds impact (from public engagement through to policy) through four workshop sessions run by experts in their fields. Our workshops will be run by Dr Dane Comerford (Cambridge University’s Acting Head of Public Engagement), Barney Brown (Cambridge University’s Digital Communications Manager), Gill Luff (Cambridge University’s Brand Manager), and Ben Earley (Research Assistant, Centre for Science and Policy). 

There will also be a chance to network with like-minded students coming from a range of disciplines within Cambridge Language Sciences and the ESRC DTC over wine and nibbles. 

To register please go to www.cambridgedockingstation.com/register. Please register early to avoid disappointment as previous events have been oversubscribed. If the event is oversubscribed we will operate a waiting list. Registration will close on the 26th of February. 

CLOSER Discovery is an online resource that enables researchers to view and appraise data from eight leading UK longitudinal studies.

Users will be able to search by keyword, or browse by topic. Each search will provide a summary of the data available, how they were collected (including questions and protocols), and allow you to filter by study, topic and life stage.

This webinar, hosted by CLOSER, will give attendees the opportunity to find out more about the beta website, what is next in development, as well as ask the CLOSER technical team questions.

You can find out more about CLOSER Discovery on the CLOSER website.

Ethics of Big Data in Practice – Lent Term Workshop Series
Organisedby the Ethics of Big Data Faculty Research Group, CRASSH

During Lent Term the Ethics of Big Data group will explore the challenges of applying ethical reasoning in different contexts connected with Big Data research. Our invited speakers will present and discuss case studies from data-driven health and policy research in Africa, administrative data research in the UK, the implementation of eHospital, a new digital platform linking patient records across Cambridge University Hospitals and research using social media data, including a study of the Islamic State organisation.
The first four case study presentations will be open to researchers by application and discussion will be conducted under Chatham House rules. If you are interested in attending please register at http://www.bigdata.cam.ac.uk/research/the-ethics-of-big-data/workshop-registration/Lent2016 and express your interest with a 100 word statement, explaining how your research will benefit from participation in the session

Please note, spaces are limited and participants are encouraged to apply early to secure a place.
The term's programme will finish with a public session on 9 March where an invited panel of experts from a range of different disciplines will be invited to consider a 'mock' research proposal which brings together a variety of the challenges from the real life case studies and present their reasoning to the audience for discussion.

For full details please see: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/programmes/ethics-of-big-data-research-group

• Do you want to improve how you communicate visually at conferences, becoming more memorable and creating a greater impact in your field? 
• Do you want to be able to put together an academic poster more efficiently, so saving you time?
• Do you want to broaden your communication skills, helping your future employability? 

The ESRC DTC will once again be running a PhD Academic Poster Competition (due to take place on Friday 11 March) as part of its Visual Communications afternoon and we are offering a preparatory training session.

To book your place, please email:  esrcdtc@admin.cam.ac.uk by noon on Monday 25 January

Energy@Cambridge networking evening for PhD students and early career researchers

‘Good technology does not require public investment’

PhD and early career researchers working in the Faculties of Humanities, Social Sciences, Technology or Physical Sciences are invited to take part in this event.  You do not need to be an expert in the field of science and technology to attend - the aim of the event is to build interdisciplinary links and consider how different disciplines approach the issues around good technology and public investment.

We have a number of spaces for social scientists and science/technology PhD students and early career researchers to take part and will select participants to cover a range of disciplines.

Format: Professor Michael Pollitt, Judge Business School and Dr Julian Peck, Cambridge Enterprise will both give a 5-10 min overview of the issues from a policy and technology viewpoint to stimulate the discussion. The groups will then discuss the issues with a mix of scientists/engineers, humanities and social scientists.

 Discussion to include the following:

• As a scientist/social scientist or humanities researcher discuss how different disciplines approach the issues around good technology and public investment.
• What factors affect which technologies are adopted?
• What are the risks/benefits to society?
• How do market forces affect technology development and policy?
• What role should government play to nurture new technologies?

Places are limited and confirmations will be sent out by email in due course. To apply to take part please send an email to energy@admin.cam.ac.uk by Friday 15 January with the following details:

Name:

Department:

Supervisor:

Research topic or Project Title:

What makes a good social scientist?    This short workshop – for first year Ph.D students in particular, but anyone is welcome, is designed to tease out what we want emerging Cambridge social scientists to aim for during their time as students so as to ensure that they produce good social science.   This workshop will provide an opportunity for you to reflect on where you have got to so far and where you need to get to, as well as an opportunity to reflect on the kind of skills that you think that you will need to develop during the course of your Ph.D.

(Convenors: Prof Loraine Gelsthorpe, Dr Maria Iacovou,  Dr Konstantina Stamati)

The all-day Philomathia Symposium is a unique opportunity to hear distinguished speakers debating the topic What world will we leave for our grandchildren? Their discussion will cover Austerity, Precarity, and Heritage (see programme, attached).

Places are limited, so if you are able to attend please contact Dr Kristen Klebba via philomathia@admin.cam.ac.uk to register by Friday, 20 November.

For more on the Philomathia Social Sciences Research Programme at Cambridge, please visit: www.ssrp.cshss.cam.ac.uk