🎉Dear SCDTP Students, PGRs, and Supervisors🎉,

Happy New Year and welcome to the first edition of the SCDTP and Network Update for 2025!

We hope you had a restful and joyful holiday season and are feeling refreshed for the year ahead.

As we embark on another exciting chapter, this newsletter remains a vital connection point for our community, bringing you the latest updates, opportunities, and events across the partnership. Your engagement and feedback throughout last year were invaluable, and we’re eager to continue building a dynamic and supportive environment together in 2025.

Take a moment to explore the updates and links below, and as always, we welcome your thoughts and suggestions to help us grow stronger as a community.

Here’s to a productive and inspiring year ahead!

🌟 Share Your Thoughts on Wellbeing Support 🌟

As we begin a new year, our weekly meditation sessions are on pause, giving us an opportunity to reflect on how we can better support your wellbeing moving forward.

These sessions, sponsored by SCDTP and offered free to all cohort members, were created to provide a calming space for relaxation and stress relief amidst the challenges of postgraduate research. While attendance has been lower than we hoped, we understand that schedules and priorities vary.

We’d love to hear from you! Whether you joined a session or not, your feedback is invaluable in shaping future initiatives that truly meet the needs of our community. Please take a few moments to complete a short survey and help us refine our approach to wellbeing support.

Your voice matters, and your input will have a lasting impact on our efforts to create a supportive and enriching environment for all. Thank you for helping us make a difference!

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🎤 Volunteer Opportunity: Chair or Facilitate at the SCDTP Final Year Conference 🎤

We are excited to announce that the SCDTP Final Year Conference will take place on Friday, 24 January 2025! The FYC committee is working diligently to ensure this is a memorable and enriching event for final-year students and all attendees.

The conference will feature three themed rooms with presentations running simultaneously. The FYC committee is inviting students and PDFs to volunteer as chairs or facilitators for these sessions. This is a fantastic opportunity to:

• Gain valuable experience to enhance your CV.
• Develop skills in leadership and facilitation.
• Make a meaningful contribution to the SCDTP community.

If you have expertise related to one of the conference themes, this could be an excellent way to share your knowledge and support your peers.

📩 Interested?

Please email us at scdtp@soton.ac.uk to express your interest. Volunteers will receive training, guidance, and support from the FYC team. You’ll also have the chance to join the organising committee meetings to be part of the event planning process.

Thank you for helping make this conference a success!

Responsibilities and roles are:

Chair:

1. 1. Prior to the day- Familiarise themselves with speakers abstracts
   2. Introduce speakers
   3. Take notes and facilitate discussion (list of Qs for speaker in case they are needed)
   4. Introduce questions

Facilitator:

1. 1. Field questions using the tech, provide list of questions to co-chair
   2. Monitor time limits and keep speakers to time with prompts where required
   3. Provide contingency if question tech fails (post it notes for Qs)

The themes of the rooms are:

Adapt:

Example topics include:

‘The Role of Trauma in the Association between Autism and Psychosis’, ‘Reducing work hours for a 'better future'? Exploring preferences and experiences of working-time reduction’, ‘Material belongings: Family and nation as lived by members of LGBTQ+ in Lebanon’, ‘Navigating Hospital Operations Through Simulation: A Study of Urban Flooding Disasters and Physical Damage Impact’.

Evolve:

Example topics include:

‘Memory beliefs and memory distortion: The impact of memory misunderstanding in clinical and legal contexts’, ‘Exploring Individuation as a Strategy for Enhancing Recall Accuracy in Intelligence-Gathering Investigation Teams’, ‘How orangutans cope in a rehabilitation environment: Examining attachment and attachment-related behaviours with mothers, caregivers and peers’, ‘Charting Westminster’s Bubble: An Ideological Map of Britain’s Digital Elite’.

Innovate:

Example topics include:

‘It feels like a lightness, and it feels… happy”: Gender Euphoria, Gender Dysphoria, and Sexual Wellbeing in Transgender and Non-Binary Adults’, ‘Attachment and Support Behaviours in Long-Distance Relationships’, ‘Seasonality and Child Health in Bangladesh’, ‘Perception of Natural Scenes: Colour and Depth in Vision’.

Dear SCDTP Staff, Students and Supervisors,

As announced in our previous newsletter, we’re excited to share that the SCDTP Hub is in development and progressing well! This central platform will provide access to key resources, guidelines, and updates on events and opportunities within our community.

While the Hub is still in its development stage, registration remains open, and we encourage you to sign up. This will help us test the platform and ensure everything is ready for the full launch. Once your login is set up, we’ll email you with access details.

Don’t forget, we’ve also introduced a Help Form where you can send us your feedback or report any issues with the SCDTP website.

Thank you for your patience and support as we work to make the SCDTP Hub a valuable resource for everyone!

Your input is invaluable as we move forward, and we appreciate your support in helping us shape this platform to better serve the community.

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Join us for an insightful online session on 13 January from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM, exploring how to better understand and accommodate autistic individuals in research settings.

When: 13 January 2025, 12:00 – 13:00 pm

Where: Online (Zoom) 

What: Autistic people have a different way of perceiving, interacting with, and relating to the world. This can result in a range of sensory and communication differences, which are often misunderstood. This session will focus on understanding and accommodating autistic people within the context of research, study, and the workplace. In this session will consider inclusive ways of working with autistic students, colleagues, staff, and research participants.

Who: SCDTP staff, students, PDFs

Facilitator: Holly Radford (SCDTP EDI Champion)

How to join: No need to sign up, just join using the zoom link:

• Join Zoom Meeting: https://port-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/83770997057?pwd=HA9exmIO29wIWzo6ARhjEuJVeYDSt1.1
• Meeting ID: 837 7099 7057
• Passcode: 434383

We look forward to seeing you there!

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🌟 Explore Exciting ESRC Fellowship and Placement Opportunities! 🌟

As part of the SCDTP network, we’re thrilled to highlight an excellent ESRC Fellowship and two placement opportunities available to SCDTP students (excluding first-year PhD and Master's students).

These opportunities are designed to enhance your research experience and expand your professional skills. Don’t miss out on the chance to gain valuable expertise and make impactful connections!

This scheme offers early-career researchers, along with AHRC-funded and ESRC-funded doctoral students, exclusive access to the world-renowned collections, programs, and expertise at prestigious host institutions. Its goal is to enrich research by enhancing its depth, diversity, and range, including studies on underrepresented and under-researched cultures and histories.

ESRC-funded PhD students are invited to apply for a fellowship to visit the Library of Congress for 3 to 6 months. To learn more about this exciting opportunity, join a webinar on January 23 at 2:00 PM, where further details will be shared, and you will have the chance to ask questions.

Please find attached details of a placement opportunity being offered by The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR is the independent regulatory arm of the UK Statistics Authority, which is a non-ministerial government department.

The project offers an opportunity to improve the way OSR regulates official statistics across the UK statistical system, by creating greater accountability for government departments to comply with the intelligent transparency principles.

The project seeks to develop a monitoring and reporting approach for intelligent transparency, which will be summarised in a report.

The application deadline is the 24 January 2025 16:00 GMT. Details on how to apply can be found within the opportunity attached in the links above.

Please find attached details of a placement opportunity being offered by Ipsos UK, in collaboration with The Market Research Society (MRS). The lead host organisation Ipsos UK is a leading market research company specialising in delivering insights into consumer behaviour and public opinion. The collaborating host organisation is The Market Research Society (MRS), a professional body, trade association and regulator for individuals and organisations involved in market, social, and opinion research.

The project seeks to understand how to better engage Generation Z (15-to-24-year-olds) in market research surveys by using behavioural science (or other applied social science approaches) to address barriers to participation in face-to-face fieldwork. 

The application deadline is the 7 February 2025 at 23:59 (GMT). Details on how to apply can be found within the opportunity attached. 

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This free online drop-in is for anyone working or thinking of working with secondary survey data who are looking for help and advice with their project or research. It is targeted at academic and non-academic researchers, as well as students, and anyone with an interest in survey data, whether absolute beginners or more seasoned users.

Come along to discuss any questions you might have with experts from the UK Data Service training team during this one hour session.

We can help with topics such as:

• deciding which surveys could be useful for your project and how to find them
• finding variables that match your needs
• understanding survey documentation
• population inference: using weights and survey design variables
• working with longitudinal data
• things to consider when using secondary survey data
• software related questions: R, Stata or SPSS
• any other queries you might have

More information and booking

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As we kick off the first edition of the SCDTP and Network Update for 2025, we want to take a moment to thank you for your continued involvement and contributions to our community. Your enthusiasm, feedback, and active participation have played a crucial role in the success of our network, and we're eager to carry that momentum into the new year.

We hope this edition inspires and informs you as we step into 2025, with plenty of opportunities ahead. As always, we welcome your thoughts, questions, or suggestions at scdtp@soton.ac.uk—your input is invaluable to us as we strive to grow and improve together.

Thank you for being a vital part of the SCDTP community. We look forward to reconnecting with you throughout the year and working together to achieve great things.

Best wishes for a successful and fulfilling 2025!

Warm regards,
🎉The SCDTP Team🎉

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