SeNSS Director's Bulletin - June 2022

Dear SeNSS community, 

 

We are delighted to announce that SeNSS has awarded 39 new studentship awards for the October 2022 start, as well as six Post-Doctoral Fellowship awards. We look forward to welcoming the 2022/23 cohort in October!  

 

We are also pleased to welcome our first 6 undergraduate students taking part to the Summer Research Experience Placements scheme. The students will be based at the University of East Anglia and the University of Kent and will be working on research projects with their supervisors over the summer months. 

 

We are also thrilled to announce that the following SeNSS-funded students have been awarded their PhDs: 

 

  • Anthoulla Phella, University of Surrey, Economics 

  • Christy Hehir, University of Surrey, Business and Management Studies 

  • Erkin Sagiev, University of Essex, Economics 

  • Jessica Dawson, University of Essex, Psychology 

  • Laura Saavedra-Lux, University of Essex, Politics and International Relations 

  • Stefano Maiani, University of Essex, Business and Management Studies 

  • Thomas Hein, Goldsmiths, Psychology 

  • Ben Davies, University of Kent, Business and Management Studies 

  • Katie Carpenter, University of Kent, Psychology 

 

We are very excited to announce that after two years, this year’s annual SeNSS Summer Conference will be held face-to-face on 6-8 July 2022 at the University of Surrey.  In collaboration with colleagues at Surrey and the SeNSS Student Forum, we chose as a conference theme Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Social Sciences. Highlights of the programme are a keynote address by Professor Christine Hine, University of Surrey, sessions on AI, SeNSS Student Forum elections, 3 minute thesis presentations, research poster and photograph competitions, and a range of parallel student interactive sessions. There will be plenty of time to socialise and get to know each other, including a wine reception and buffet dinner on the first night, and a BBQ followed by a social event organised by the SeNSS Student Forum on the second night. You can find a draft programme here: https://senss-dtp.ac.uk/senss-summer-conference. We hope to see you there!  

The student editors of the SeNSS student-led Sentio journal are very busy working on producing Issue 4, the theme of which is “Resilience”. This issue will be published in October 2022, with the launch to form part of the SeNSS Winter Induction.  

 

Reminder! SeNSS will shortly be launching the supervisor phase of the collaborative studentship competition. A webinar for interested supervisors will be held on 29 June from 2-4pm, which will cover all the necessary information on how the competition works, as well as a number of strategies for making a successful application. The Zoom link for the webinar is https://essex-university.zoom.us/j/92692874167. Please click on the link to register for this webinar.

 

Changes in office hours! The Manager will offer a virtual one-hour slot via Zoom (https://essex-university.zoom.us/j/96638485079) every Tuesday afternoon from 2-3pm in order to discuss any issue relating to SeNSS that anyone (students, PDFs, supervisors, PILs etc) wishes to raise. 

 

We are sad to announce that Paul Newman, our SeNSS Coordinator, will be leaving us on 30 June 2022. We would like to thank Paul for all his hard work and dedication throughout the years and congratulate him on his new role within the University of Essex. Please note that this means that are core team is working with a further reduced capacity until we recruit a new SeNSS Coordinator, and may take longer than usual to respond to emails and queries. 

 

Information! Please note that SeNSS cannot provide funding for gold access or cover the processing costs for publishing. Please speak to your supervisors and/or your home institutions on best ways to publish using green open access and avoiding predatory publishers. Further information on publishing and open access will also be provided during the SeNSS Summer conference, where there will be sessions on How to get published and Open access publishing. 

 

Information! The Transitions and Transformations survey is part of a pioneering new project at the University of Essex aiming to break down barriers and support the next generation of Black researchers from undergraduate through to postgraduate level. This survey has been created to ask about the experiences of Black postgraduate taught (PGT) and postgraduate research (PGR) students in relation to any challenges they may have faced at transition points in their academic journey (UG dissertation, Masters dissertation and PhD thesis). The responses to this survey will be used to inform the project’s objectives of increasing Black access and participation in postgraduate research and enabling retention and progression of Black talent in research. Please fill out the survey here: https://essex.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_740XwD5HZzBJ2wm 

 

Best wishes, 

Ismene 

 

Prof Ismene Gizelis  

Director, SeNSS DTP  

 

 

SeNSS Consortium