At the first PGForum postgraduate day during the BSA's 2009 Annual Conference, many people spoke of the difficulties of being a graduate student - the emotional challenges, the worries and feelings of inadequacy, and the difficulty of negotiating relationships with supervisors or the challenges of being a part-time student. 

A recent online publication from the Higher Education Academy shares similar stories about the experience of doing a PhD, and the personal and emotional turmoil that it can entail.  It is a great affirmation of the complexities of a doctorate, and provides an opportunity to learn from others' experiences. http://escalate.ac.uk/6550

If you are interested in emotions and the PhD experience, we also invite you to join PGForum at this year's Postgraduate Day (6 April, BSA Conference, Glasgow), where one of our topics will be happiness and enjoyment in the PhD process. 

An Interdisciplinary Colloquium for Postgraduate Students

Goldsmiths, University of London

How might histories of social groups be communicated through bodies and bodily action? From dress and gesture to diet and hygiene, the ways in which bodies are conceived of socially can be integral to the (re)production of socio-historical value systems and political structures. Bodies and Socio-Histories is a student-led colloquium for postgraduates that will explore the relationship between physical practice and historical narrative.

Organised by the Sociology of Theatre and Performance Research Group at Goldsmiths, University of London, led by Professor Maria Shevtsova, this event will provide an opportunity for postgraduates across the UK and abroad to engage with their peers across disciplines in a challenging and supportive environment.

For further details please contact stpr.group@gmail.com

and/or see -http://www.stprgroup.blogspot.com/

Date: 21–22 May 2010

Venue: University of Stirling, Scotland, U.K.

Keynote speakers:

Dr. Rajinder Dudrah (University of Manchester)

Dr. David Herbert (Open University)

Contemporary events with catastrophic global ramifications, such as the current economic crisis or ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, are not only mediated by super-fast digital communication and information networks but also conditioned by these rapidly advancing technologies. From the social networking site Facebook to the Middle Eastern satellite news channel Al Jazeera, digital forms of culture have multiplied in recent years, proliferating conduits and connections across the globe which shape our lives in multifarious ways. In the light of this, a postcolonial perspective on information and communication technologies is pressing. How far is cyberspace mediated by metropolitan centres of knowledge production, and how might new media entrench existing structures of inequality, by serving corporate capitalist interests or by saturating consumers with hegemonic representations of global events? Conversely, to what extent can technologies operate as tools of empowerment or resistance for marginalised peoples, by bypassing forms of censorship and facilitating access to global arenas of debate and alternative communities? How have new technologies impacted on issues of identity, place and nation, and shifted the parameters of postcolonial thought?

This inaugural postgraduate conference of the Postcolonial Studies Association will consider the cultural, political, and practical effects of information and communication technologies on postcolonial peoples and spaces. The PSA invites papers from postgraduates working in the disciplines of literature, history, cultural studies, film, human geography, linguistics, politics, psychology, religious studies, art, music, media & communication, and informatics, among others. Our aim is to bring together a wide variety of scholarly interests and methodological approaches.

Papers may focus on, but are not limited to, the following conceptual intersections:

• Technologies and neo-imperialism: cultural imperialism and homogenization, digital media and hegemony, technological warfare and its virtual representations (computer games);

   

• Technologies and capitalism: commodification of information, web marketing and advertising, uneven access to technology, uneven development of technologies (industrial and agricultural);

   

• Technologies and resistance: alternative virtual communities, ‘indigenous’ media and self-determination, sustainable technologies, open-source soft ware communities, hackers and cybercrime;

   

• Technologies and communication: new forms of language, literacy, transnational social networking sites, censorship and its circumvention, ‘freedom of speech’, media as social and political commentary;

   

• Technologies and place: spatial dislocation, the erosion of national boundaries, cosmopolitanisms (tele-technologies such as mobile phones, email, internet telephony, webcams);

   

• Technologies and youth identities: music as sub-cultural expression (downloads and MP3 players), virtual subjectivities and transnational communities (computer games, YouTube, chat rooms);

   

• Technologies and text: new filmic and literary genres, the production of alternative modernities, textual representations of technologies;

   

• Technologies and knowledge: education and e-learning, data and surveillance, globalisation and the idea of ‘democratised’ or ‘universal’ knowledge (web-based search engines);

   

• Technologies and the ‘new’: new uses of old technologies, modernity and cultural innovation.

   

Panels will normally comprise of three 20-minute papers. Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to Brian Rock by 15 March 2010: brian.rock@stir.ac.uk

Aside from keynote papers and parallel panels of postgraduate presentations, the conference will host training workshops relating to professional and research skills led by both established and early career scholars. These will include a Q&A session with Prof. Stephanie Newell (University of Sussex) on her career path in the field of postcolonial studies.

The JPW/PSA Essay Prize 2010 will be awarded at the conference. Details about the prize will be available shortly on the PSA website: www.postcolonialstudiesassociation.co.uk

2-4 September 2010; Trento, Italy

The EASST_010 conference is the biennial forum of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) for contributions on topics from the range of disciplines found within science, technology and innovation studies.

As in previous years, the EASST010 conference combines a broad platform for contributions along with a particular focus.  The 2010 conference  turns its attention on the performativity of technoscientific practices and, more generally, on science and technology as situated practices rooted and grown in the connections of a sociomaterial ecology.

The notions of “social construction” and “social shaping” of science and technology have been crucial for the development (and success) of science & technology studies.  Increasingly, however, the “social” is seen as a question  rather than as a distinctive explanatory category. The “social” begins to be viewed as the result of the connections that take place in an ecology of elements and heterogeneous relations, as well as of the scenarios these connections depict. Moreover, terms such as “construction” and “shaping” are frequently replaced by concepts, verbs and metaphors drawn from the cultures of performance. Science and technology, are seen as performative domains of the “social”; choreographies of sociomaterial relations where realities and representations are enacted simultaneously.

One approach recognizes the performative character of science and technology, understanding when, where and how a “thing” arises, and explores the ways in which science and technology “do things”. Another approach addresses the “doing” of things: namely, that the performances and the performativity of scientific and technological practices are embedded and embodied in material, symbolic and textual artefacts.

Through practicing science and technology, and in scientific and technological practices, so, “doing things” and the “doing of things” find a common ground of expression. A key characteristic of contemporary worlds, in fact, is the role played by knowledge practices in the production and reproduction of the sociomaterial configuration which is often called “society”. STS and the concepts of practice and performance enable a unique perspective for studying and observing scientific and technological innovations, as well as the articulation of different forms of sociality and ideas of the social. This is the challenge nowadays addressed in key areas such as medicine and genomics, body and gender, work and organizations, communication & technology, consumption & markets, geographies and space.

New organizational procedure

In contrast to previous EASST conferences, the 2010 conference involved a first stage call for track convenors. Thus, the EASST010 conference is organized in 40 thematic tracks (plus one ‘Open Track’), grouped in 15 parallel groups that run throughout the whole conference (please, have a look at the ‘Abstract Submission’ section for the submission guidelines and deadline).

Each thematic track has a Convenor (or a team of): Track Convenors will manage their theme within the call for abstracts, and will be responsible for reviewing, accepting/rejecting and organising submissions into their track. Convenors will independently set the session topics and overall organization of the track (in case a track collects less then 10 abstracts, there will be a discussion with the Programme Committee to decide whether to run the track anyway or join another track) and they are supposed to join the track they are organizing for its entire duration.

Important dates and deadlines:

- 2010, March 15: deadline for abstracts submission;

- 2010, May 15: Communication of acceptance/rejection of abstracts to authors and opening of online registrations;

- 2010, June 15: early registrations deadline

For more information and to see the list of thematic tracks: http://events.unitn.it/en/easst010

The SPA invites applications for its Standard and Postgraduate Small Grants Schemes, designed to help fund seminars and workshops dealing with research and/or learning & teaching in a way that is of benefit to the social policy community and SPA members. The focus should be on activities that will benefit a group or network rather than individuals.

During 2010, applications for awards to support events with an international focus and/or to facilitate attendance from overseas, are particularly encouraged.

Funds will be made available in two rounds of applications over the year. Round one runs from 1st January to 30th June and round two from 1st July to 31st December. Applications are welcomed at any point within each award period, and funds are allocated on a first-come first-served basis.

Each award offers a maximum of £500. 

Applicants will be expected to:

• Be SPA members;
• Publicise their seminar/workshop as widely as possible, including through SPA channels;
• Write a short report after the event to SPA members via Policy World;
• Use this as an opportunity to recruit new SPA members (including marketing via other channels, distribution of SPA leaflets, use of SPA logo, etc.);
• Make the seminar/workshop as inclusive as possible (attendance need not be limited to SPA members);
• Raise the profile of the SPA to external agencies (government, independent sector, research centres, etc) in the UK and other countries as appropriate;
• Provide a provisional budget which must include a full breakdown of costs, indicating the items on which the award will be spent, and specify whether additional funding from other sources is being sought or has already been secured.  

Applications, which should take the form of a letter (2 sides maximum), should contain an outline description of the aims, rationale and nature of the proposed event. Applicants should also clearly demonstrate how it meets each of the above criteria. As much detail as possible about your plans to ensure that the award will benefit SPA members should be included at this stage. Additionally, applications to the Postgraduate Scheme require confirmation (signature and stamp) from a departmental postgraduate tutor/head of department that a host institution would be able to raise an account to hold funds transferred by the SPA (administered by the SPA treasurer).

The SPA reserves the right to pay the award in more than one instalment if this is appropriate. It also reserves the right to reject applications from those who have failed to fulfil small grant award conditions in the past. 

Please send your application (no more than two sides) as an attachment to an email to Dr Majella Kilkey: M.M.Kilkey@hull.ac.uk. Enquiries about the schemes should also by directed by email to Majella Kilkey.

The domestic and housing transitions of LGBT young people

This PhD project aims to explore the interaction between sexuality and youth transitions through focusing on the housing and relationship experiences of LGBT young people in their late teens and twenties. It is an ESRC +3 studentship linked to the ESRC Research Centre for Population Change, where the student will work under the direction of Professor Sue Heath, one of the Centre’s Co-Directors.

Background

Most existing research on the domestic and housing transitions of young people tends to focus on heterosexual experience. The relative invisibility of non-heterosexual young adults in this body of research may be partly due to the lack of fit between the lived experiences of many LGBT young people and dominant models of youth transitions which often continue to assume eventual progression to heterosexual marriage and parenthood. The limited existing transitions research on LGBT young people is often focused on the experiences of those who have been affected by very specific difficulties (eg homelessness) in their housing transitions, such that we know even less about the experiences of a more general population of LGBT young people. This studentship is focused on the interaction between sexuality and the domestic and housing transitions of LGBT young people in their late teens and twenties, as well as on the ways in which housing transitions may differ for LGBT young people, in order to critically engage with the notion of transition underpinning much youth research. It is envisaged that the research will be primarily qualitative in focus, although the use of a mixed methods approach is not precluded. Beyond these parameters, the successful applicant will be free to develop their own research ideas within this broad topic area.

The Centre

The ESRC Centre for Population Change is based in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Southampton, and aims to improve understanding of the key drivers and implications of population change within the UK. The Centre is a joint initiative between the University of Southampton and a consortium of Scottish Universities in partnership with the Office for National Statistics and the General Registrar Office in Scotland, and is directed by Professor Jane Falkingham (University of Southampton) and co-directed by Professors Maria Evandrou, Sue Heath (both at Southampton) and Paul Boyle (University of St Andrews).

This studentship will contribute to a strand of research focusing on the dynamics of household change and living arrangements across the life course, which includes a project currently under way on the housing pathways of 25-34 year olds who live alone or in shared households. The successful applicant will be able to play a full part in the life of the Centre, as well as sharing in training and research activities with other research students in the Division of Sociology and Social Policy (Professor Heath’s divisional base), in the School of Social Sciences and within the Graduate School of the Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences.

Eligibility

Applicants should have or expect to have an ESRC-recognised master’s programme in a relevant social science discipline (please see the ESRC 'Guidance notes for applicants', in particular sections 2.13 to 2.16 and annex 1, for further details). They should also have a good understanding of and sensitivity towards methodological issues involved in conducting research with LGBT young people.

What the award pays

This ESRC award pays all University tuition fees, plus an annual maintenance stipend (set at £13,290 for the 2009-2010 academic year).

Application Procedure

No separate application form is required to apply for the studentship. Please apply following the steps below:

1. Go to 'how to apply'
2. Click on the button at the bottom of the page marked ‘Apply online here’
3. Select the button marked ‘Research’ (if not already checked)
4. Click the arrow to the right of ‘School’, pull down the menu and highlight and click ‘School of Social Sciences’
5. Click the button marked ‘Search for Programme’
6. Click ‘Apply online’ beside the MPhil/PhD in Sociology and Social Policy
7. When completing the form, please state in Section 8 (funding) that you wish to be considered for the Centre for Population Change studentship.
8. Please attach an up to date CV, including a summary of your grades thus far in your degree, and a covering letter. The covering letter should be no more than one side of A4, must clearly state why you think you would be a good candidate for the award, and provide a brief preliminary outline of how you would propose to develop a research design in this topic area.

Please send a copy of your CV and covering letter to Mrs Gill Crumplin at G.S.Crumplin@soton.ac.uk or by post to: Mrs Gill Crumplin, Building 58, Highfield Campus, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom, SO17 1BJ.

Further information

Informal inquiries may be made to Professor Sue Heath (sue.heath@soton.ac.uk).

The application deadline is 5 March 2010.

Shortlisted candidates will be called for an interview in late March.

London Debates 2010: How does Europe in the 21st century address the
legacy of colonialism?

LONDON DEBATES
at the School of Advanced Study
13 - 15 May 2010

CALL FOR PAPERS

The School of Advanced Study at the University of London invites applications for the second of a series of international debates for outstanding young researchers in the humanities and social sciences.

London Debates are discussion workshops at which a subject of broad concern in the humanities and social sciences is debated by a small group of invited senior academics and a selection of early-career researchers. The resulting publication will be published online by the School of Advanced Study.

The competition is open to scholars based in the EU/EEA, who are in their final-year of doctoral study or up to 10 years beyond the award of their doctorate. Successful applicants will be awarded bursaries to cover travel and accommodation.

You are invited to send the following in English by email attachment
*        Your curriculum vitae (2000 words maximum);
*        the name, address and email address of one referee
*        a response of 2000-3000 words on the subject below

to Rosemary Lambeth (rosemary.lambeth@sas.ac.uk), by the closing date of Friday 29 January 2010, with a hard copy sent to reach the Dean, School of Advanced Study, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1 7HU, by Friday 5 February 2010.

The 2010 topic is: How does Europe in the 21st Century address the legacy of colonialism?

We inhabit a world that continues to be shaped by the legacy of European colonial expansion and exploitation. Patterns of migration, trade, investment and even aid reflect that legacy, and it casts a long shadow over diplomatic, military and cultural relationships between Europe and the developing world. In domestic as well as foreign affairs, European policy makers are constantly being reminded that they operate within a historical context of which colonialism was an integral part. In what ways does this shape the domestic and foreign policies of contemporary European states? And how do European citizens address this legacy in their daily lives?

The legacy of Imperialism has also lain behind some of the most impassioned recent debates within academia. It has been suggested that whole branches of supposedly 'objective' academic study provided ideological legitimacy for and even materially assisted the colonial project. The 'Orientalist' debate of the 1970s and '80s, which contributed to the rise of postcolonial studies, has been reinvigorated in the last decade by the 'War on Terror' and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. Some scholars have been accused of facilitating the path to conflict by producing work that 'rehabilitates' the record of European colonialism, or which perpetuates hostile stereotypes of the non-European 'other'. Not only in the research they do, but over issues such as freedom of speech and the introduction of more inclusive admissions policies, European Universities grapple daily with the legacy of the colonial past.

Your response may include, but is not limited to, the areas under the two headings below.

Please note that preference will be given to papers that have genuine interdisciplinary appeal, and which have important implications for our broader understanding of the legacy of European colonialism.

1. The domestic and foreign policy of European states. What is the relevance of the legacy of the colonialism in the following areas?

*        Race Relations
*        Language
*        Migration, Refugees, Asylum Issues
*        Human Rights
*        Legal Systems
*        Public Services in Europe
*        The ideologies of the European Left and Right
*        The Commonwealth, the Organisation internationale de la
Francophonie and comparable international organisations
*        Trade
*        Aid
*        Military intervention

2. European culture, leisure and academia. What has been the impact of the legacy of colonialism over the following?

*        The novel
*        Post-colonialism and Post-Modernism
*        Patterns of consumption
*        Tourism
*        Historical research
*        Religion
*        Music

BSA FOOD STUDY GROUP CONFERENCE 2010: FOOD, SOCIETY AND PUBLIC HEALTH
Monday 5th - Tuesday 6th July 2010
British Library Conference Centre, London

Confirmed plenary speakers: Claude Fischler, CNRS, Paris
and Harriet Friedmann, University of Toronto, Canada
 
The aim of this 2nd conference is to further explore the interface between food, society and public health through a sociological lens.  Understanding patterns of food consumption, food acquirement or food production offers wider insights into social class, ethnicity, self-identity and the life course and the implications for national and global inequalities.

Food systems and eating practices are changing in response to the worldwide economic downturn and ever present environmental concerns, including climate change. This raises many questions, including: How are people responding? Is there a return to a ‘make do and mend’ mentality in relation to food? Are families passing on food skills and knowledge in a bid to ‘pull together’ and cope with change? Are food systems and eating practices becoming more sustainable?

What about food production and consumption in less developed countries? We are keen to explore how changing food systems are impacting on food security and livelihoods in developed and less developed countries. Is innovative action being taken to maximise the use of locally grown food, both in terms of improving sustainability and with regard to the taste/enjoyment of food?

This leaves us with the further question of whether current policies and interventions to improve diet and reduce levels of obesity remain pertinent, or do we need new solutions in a changed and changing world?
 
Further details are available from:
www.britsoc.co.uk/events/food or
www.food-study-group.org.uk
 
The abstract submission deadline is Friday 29th January 2010.
Abstracts received after this date will not be considered.
 
Please direct any academic enquiries to w.j.wills@herts.ac.uk and any administrative enquiries to conference@britsoc.org.uk
 
 

In this edition we are very pleased to welcome Wendy White, Faculty Librarian for the School of Social Sciences (as well as Law and Arts) at the University of Southampton.

Wendy spoke to PG Focus about conducting library research as a PG research student, in particular with regard to:

*Planning Literature Searches

*Techniques to help build your literature review

*Methods and techniques in Library and Desk research

*Adapting the research process to your own ways of thinking & working

Her professional interests include open access issues, research impact and bibliometrics. She is involved in library strategy for research at Southampton, as well as sitting on the University’s Research Projects Board, and REF Planning Group. Wendy is also works on the Institutional Data Management Blueprint (funded by JISC); as well as being an advisory board member of the ESRC funded ReStore project.

This episode was produced, edited and the interview conducted by Mike Bracher for the British Sociological Association.

A transcript of this episode can be downloaded here

This page from the London School of Economics hosts public lecture media from eminent scholars and speakers in social, political and economic sciences.

At the top of the page you can also subscribe via iTunes to the channel 'U' service, and receive automatic updates of future uploads.  iTunesU is the new academic-focused service that delivers scholar-relevant content in the same way as its main podcast service.

http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/publicLecturesAndEvents.htm