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A poster, a proposal and a first draft paper: PhD journal months 6 & 7


Photograph of pink cherry blossom against a blue sky, shot from below

Against the backdrop of a welcome transition out of full pandemic lockdown measures, the last couple of months of PhD life have featured some particularly interesting events (virtual, naturally) and making progress in a few areas of the project (something I hadn't really appreciated until I looked back at my work log to write this post!) This included announcing a big piece of personal news and submitting an application for a break in study... for maternity leave! This time last year I wouldn't have guessed that I'd be adding another life milestone to 2020/21 on top of buying a house for the first time, moving to a new city after eleven years in London, and adopting two cats, but why not add something else into the mix! The pregnancy has definitely been more of a distraction from PhD work than I would have predicted. Fortunately, so far, I'm having a straightforward pregnancy with no signs of complications, but first trimester symptoms still knocked me for six, and thoughts about pregnancy, the baby, labour, and life once the baby is here still take up quite a lot of headspace. For now I'm just trying to get as much done as I reasonably can, focusing on getting a rough draft of my RF2 (confirmation of PhD) complete before I step away from the PhD in August. 

A key milestone unlocked in March and April was writing and submitting an ethics application, along with a data management plan, for the aspect of my project involving analysis of secondary data. Under my institution's ethics protocols, this kind of research requires a lighter-touch process without the need for a full ethics review (as will be needed for the aspects of my project involving primary data collection with participants). As I have the opportunity to progress the secondary data element and start a data access process that could take a while, I'm submitting separate applications for these different elements of the project. This first ethics application went smoothly and I developed and submitted a research proposal to the organisation I'm requesting secondary data from, the Higher Education Access Tracker HEAT. Though it's theoretically possible to access anonymised HEAT data for research purposes, I'd be one of the first external researchers to do so which makes it an interesting but uncertain process. Luckily, so far, everything with this aspect of the project is progressing well; the HEAT Research Group has received my research proposal and approved access to the dataset. Next will be formally working out the details of this with the central team at HEAT and, hopefully not too far down the line, getting access to the data. My plan is to use this data to make some observations about the demographic makeup of participants in WP programmes at HEAT member institutions, but the extent that I'm able to do this will only really become clear once I can start analysing the data. 

I also took a few days away from working on my PhD research to return to the dissertation I completed for last year's Social Science MRes. For this project, I explored an aspect of widening participation policy enactment, looking at ways that contextual factors shape the interpretation of 'targeting' with university WP departments, and how in turn these different contextualised approaches make possible certain target groups and targeting dimensions while excluding others. I explored this issue through a series of in-depth interviews with WP practitioners and managers - nineteen in the end - and had a strong feeling that I should at least attempt to get the research out to a wider audience to make the most of the time and energy that all those people gave in order to make project possible. Earlier in the academic year, my supervisors suggested that the research might best be developed into two separate papers covering different aspects, so my first task was to think more about what material from the dissertation would go into each of these. As I way of getting going, I decided to focus on one paper initially and began trimming out the content that would be used in the other paper, as well as making significant cuts to some sections (slashing the methodology, for example) in order to start reducing the word count down from over 15k words (plus bibliography) to around 7k words (including bibliography!). It's definitely a big task and not just a matter of making small tweaks here and there and pinging it off to a journal, but I believe in the research and think it'll be worth it to put the effort in. After an initial round of redrafting and receiving feedback from my director of studies, I'm going to allocate another 1-2 days in May to complete a second draft. 

Another priority over this time was working on my submission for the Sheffield Institute for Policy Studies Postgraduate Research Showcase and Poster Competition, then attending the virtual event and answering questions about my poster (which can be viewed at the link). A poster presentation doesn't translate easily into an online format, but it was definitely still a useful experience and I'm glad I gave it a go. I hadn't really appreciated the thought and skill required to present research in a cross-disciplinary setting, to an audience that is academic but not familiar with your field. Having only ever presented in the context of events aimed at widening participation/higher education researchers and practitioners, I hadn't anticipated the terms that would come across as jargon to those outside of this area. Neither had I really zeroed in on what about the research would be engaging to a broad audience that might have no specific interest in WP policy. In hindsight, I was underprepared and would make changes both to the poster and to how I talked about the research - but hey, it's all a learning process, right? 

Taking part in the poster showcase, and knowing I'm going to be taking a year out for maternity leave, has made me think more seriously about identifying opportunities to present my research. I need to get more comfortable presenting to specialist and non-specialist audiences both inside and outside of academia, and the only way I'm going to do this is through practice. For the non-specialist side, I definitely want to have a go at PubhD sometime in my second year and the Three Minute Thesis competition in my final year. On the specialist side, I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for opportunities for PGRs to present with SRHE, BERA and the BSA. One thing I'd be really interested in is an informal research sharing event with other masters and doctoral students doing research broadly in the area of widening participation, both as a chance to discuss my own research with those familiar with the area, and to hear what others are up to. My sense is that this doesn't yet exist, so a goal of mine is to try and make this happen - ideally before my baby-shaped break in study! 

According to my log I read and made notes on twenty-five new articles, book chapters, and books across March and April. In particular, I got a lot out of Miseducation by Diane Reay (2017), a must-read for anyone working or researching in education, Symonds and Gorard (2008) 'The Death of Mixed Methods: Research Labels and their Casualties' which makes some provocative arguments against the notion of a 'mixed methods' paradigm (and research paradigms in general!), and Lucey, Melody, and Walkerdine (2003) 'Uneasy hybrids: Psychosocial aspects of becoming educationally successful for working-class young women' which resonated so much and has inspired me to further explore the idea of the psychosocial, that which is "lived as psychic but... produced socially" (p.290), as a potential avenue for my own research project. 


March and April development 

General doctoral skills

Subject related events

Image credit: Jana Leu 

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