SeNSS Director's Bulletin October 2020

Dear SeNSS community,

 

I’m pleased to welcome our new students, and their supervisors, and our new Post-Doctoral Fellows to SeNSS, and to wish you well as you embark on your projects. I'd also like to welcome back all our returning students and their supervisors.

 

Induction Event

We will hold our virtual annual Induction Event from 12-15 October, which is mandatory for all new students. The final day, 15 October, is open to all members of the SeNSS community, and will see some of our collaborative partners showcasing their work (including SAGE Publishing, SAGE Campus, Sense about Science, and the Brilliant Club), as well as the launch of the second edition of Sentio, the SeNSS student-led journal. We would love to see you there!

 

COVID-19 linked funded extensions for students

  • Our new policy comes into effect today. Calls for applications will be made bi-annually (October and April), based on students’ funding award end dates. Our first call for applications opens today, and the policy and process for making an application is available on the SeNSS VLE.

 

2021/22 Studentship Competitions

  • Our main studentship competition for October 2021 entry opens today. Please visit the SeNSS website for details. We’ve also attached our recruitment e-poster to this email – please share this as widely as possible. Our online application portal will be open for applications once we have received UKRI’s new studentship residential eligibility criteria.   

  • As a result of this criteria change, studentships are open to "home" and "international" students: we await UKRI’s guidance as to how these two categories are defined. We expect to receive it within two weeks and will circulate it to our community then. In the meantime, please note the following: 

    • We are limited to awarding 30% of the total number of studentships awarded to international students (~12 studentships p.a.);

    • We do not yet know how we will be expected to deal with the difference between the ESRC tuition fee level and the fees HEIs charge international students. That is, whether, for example, HEIs will be expected to waive the fee difference, or will be permitted to charge this to the student.

    • As a result of this change, there will no further fees-only awards. All studentships will include a tax-free maintenance stipend (£15,285 p.a., plus £2k p.a. for those at London-based HEIs), as well as access to research funds to support activities such as UK/overseas fieldwork, overseas institutional visits, difficult language training, placements etc. 

  • The first phase of our collaborative studentship competition comes to a close for supervisor applications at 12.00 pm on Monday 5 October. There is still time to put in an application! After this competition closes, the best six applicants will be awarded studentships, which will be advertised on the SeNSS website, in November.

  •  The supervisor phase of the ARIES-SeNSS collaborative competition closed for applications on 11 September. Congratulations to Prof Zoe Davies (University of Kent) on winning this phase of the competition, with her project “How and where should we expand UK woodlands to benefit people and biodiversity?”. The studentship for her research project will be advertised on the ARIES and SeNSS websites in the coming weeks.

  • We will run three studentship recruitment webinars for potential applicants: 12-2pm on Thursday 22 October; 6.30-8.30pm on Thursday 5 November, and 12.00-2.00pm on Saturday 14 November. We particularly encourage those with little or no knowledge of postgraduate studies to attend, and would like to see as many participants as possible from diverse backgrounds. Applicants will learn what a SeNSS studentship is, and what funding is available, as well as how to identify a suitable supervisor and write a strong application. For further information, or to sign up, please go to the SeNSS website.

  • Based on the success of these initiatives last year, SeNSS will once again ring-fence one studentship for the best Advanced Quantitative Methods application and, as part of our widening participation strategy, ring-fence 12 four-year studentships for applicants who do not hold a Masters degree of any kind.

  • SeNSS requires all academics involved in SeNSS sift panels to have completed their HEI’s standard training in diversity and/or unconscious bias awareness. Please ensure you undertake this training before these panels sit early next year.

 

SeNSS Post-Doctoral Fellows

  • Finally, we offer our congratulations to our outgoing Fellows who have achieved remarkable things with their funding this year, and are now moving on to further exciting positions:

    • Dr Antonia Porter has been appointed as a lecturer (maternity cover) at the Kent Law School;

    • Dr Dishil Shrimankar has been awarded a 3-year Leverhulme Trust Post-Doctoral Fellowship, based at Royal Holloway;

    • Dr Joanna Smallwood has been appointed as a lecturer (maternity cover) at the University of Sussex Law School; and,

    • Dr Abigail Webb and Dr Sung Kyu Kim have been awarded costed extensions to their Fellowships, as a result of the impact on their research by COVID-19.

 

If you have any questions about these or any other SeNSS matters, please get in touch with me or any member of the core team.

I hope you are all keeping safe in these difficult times.

 

Best wishes,

Ismene

 

Prof Ismene Gizelis 

Director, SeNSS DTP 

SeNSS Consortium