Tag: PhD Life

Collaborating with ‘the industry’ as a PhD student

Earlier last year I was given the chance to work together with the CEO of the start-up Yoop on a ‘submission of evidence’ for an all-party parliamentary group (APPG). This is a group in the UK Parliament composed of members of parliament from all political parties. This APPG, in particular, sought to provide recommendations for the House of Commons on critical literacy and fake news and their impact on younger generations.

This was a great experience and one of those (few, lucky) serendipitous occasions, of meeting someone at the right place, at the right time: shortly before submissions were due!

In the end, we were cited several times in the published report of recommendations, presented to the House of Commons, which can be found here. This is an achievement I am rather proud of!

I have written more about this collaboration and my thoughts for the UK Data Service Data Impact Blog, as part of a collaborative series with my friend and colleague Claudia Zucca, if you’d like to read more!

Esmeralda

Impact – 1

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I’m still here! I’ve recently written a blog post for the UK Data Service, part 1 of a series, which can be found here.  I think ‘impact’ is a very interesting concept, one that guides where most of the funding goes in academia, yet which is difficult if not impossible to accurately measure. In some ways, this measurement is not fair, because it creates ‘winners’ and ‘losers’. However, life isn’t fair, and for the sake of supporting (potentially) impactful research, the use of measurement can be regarded as a necessary evil.

Research Data Impact Fellow

I am delighted to share that starting this month I will be taking up a 2-year fellowship with the UK Data Service as a Data Impact Fellow.  This fellowship programme helps a number of researchers who are using UK Data Service data with making an impact by supporting public engagement activities.

A blog post summarising my research project as well as my plans can be found here, on the Data Impact Blog.

Let’s impact!

The value of context-specific communication and interdisciplinarity

In my spare time I sometimes work for a foundation. This foundation wants to communicate academic research in the fields of marketing, PR, advertising, etcetera, to practitioners. Think about marketeers, business owners, PR specialists…

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Lessons learned: being a ‘digital scholar’

When I attend PhD training sessions, courses and events, we are always reminded that a successful PhD candidacy (at least somewhat, and perhaps even largely) depends on making an impact. In brief, being impactful = PhD success.

Knowing this, I have been reading about how to be an ‘open scholar’ or ‘digital scholar’. This is because I believe that (junior) academics rely on digital platforms for sharing knowledge and information. One of the books I’ve been reading is Martin Weller’s The Digital Scholar (2011). 

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