Research students host successful Postgraduate Symposium

9 July 2012

The first departmental Postgraduate Research Students’ Symposium, entitled ‘Social Science in a changing world: State, Society and Policy in perspective’, was held on the 29 June 2012.

The event was organised by a committee of PhD candidates (Tara Bailey, Daniela Bressa Florentin, Jenny Harlock, Luke Martinelli, Roger Merino Acuña, Fiona Morgan and Justin Rogers) with the intention of enabling fellow students from the Department of Social & Policy Sciences to showcase their research.

The Symposium delivered the opportunity for both inter-departmental and cross faculty engagement by providing students with an opportunity to present on the issues confronting their research; and to pose questions to, and receive feedback from the audience.

It was well attended by staff and students from the Faculty. Professor Ian Butler, who conceived of the idea, gave a plenary address reaffirming the importance of social science research in today’s current climate.

The symposium comprised four panels reflecting the varied research interests of our studentship:

• States and State Transformation
• Subjectivities, Relationships and Identities
• Wellbeing, Work and Welfare
• Research and Practice

Dr Emma Carmel, Director of Studies for postgraduate research declared the event was “a great opportunity for the whole research community of the department to come together to discuss key themes of doctoral students' research. The presenters faced some challenging questions from a supportive and interested audience, and there have already been follow-up debates among staff and students - invaluable evidence of the symposium's success!”

Dr Regine Paul, a recent graduate from the Department used the opportunity to deliver some methodological reflections on her completed thesis. She said “this event was extremely valuable as an opportunity to go beyond research students' individual PhD projects in order to draw out common approaches, themes, methods and research struggles. Given the professional organisation and students' impressive presentation skills the symposium easily competes with high profile academic conferences. I hope that it will become a fixed annual departmental highlight.”

Event gallery

Presentations were given on the following topics:

States and State Transformation

• The development of housing in Mexico and the main features of the welfare regime before and after neoliberal reforms (Ricardo Velazquez Leyer)
• The role of Islamic NGOs in social policy in Iraq (Janan Aljabiri)
• The impact of multilateral commitments on national development strategies: Indonesia and the Philippines in the WTO (Luke Martinelli)

Subjectivities, Relationships and Identities

• A social approximation to wellbeing: Interactions in a policy context in Mexico. (Viviana Ramirez)
• Affiliation and the reproduction of injustice (Oscar Garza)
• The formation of an academic co-authorship network (James Canton)

Wellbeing, Work and Welfare

• The analytical framework of socialising care: Through the lens of gender politics (Sung Hee Lee)
• Care and inequality: a conceptual and empirical perspective on the treatment of informal care in England (Fiona Morgan)
• No love on the dole: Does UK welfare discourage stable union formation among poor parents? (Rita Griffiths)

Research and Practice

• Beyond unique and oversimplified cases: Policy configurations, sets of ideal types and comparative explanation (Regine Paul)
• An invitation to a reflexive PhD (Justin Rogers)

You can download the abstracts from this event for further information.