These sessions are designed for sociology HDR students but students from outside the discipline are welcome to attend. There are four sessions planned for 2018:

Contextualising your Research: Disciplines and Debates

Session 1: Tuesday April 17 (10am to 12noon), Jean Martin Room, Beryl Rawson Building

We will discuss conventions and strategies for situating and contextualising your research, identifying the disciplines, sub-disciplines, problems and debates to which your research contributes. Which literatures are relevant to your problem? How do you contribute to disciplinary debates without making 'straw men' of other scholars? How do you demonstrate the originality of your work through the debates and perspectives which inform it?

Presentation and Publication

Session 2: Tuesday June 12 (10am to 12noon), Jean Martin Room, Beryl Rawson Building

This session will, firstly, provide an opportunity for students to discuss various strategies in the presentation of their work, considering how a spoken presentation differs from a written paper and how you can ‘push an agenda’ in a presentation in a scholarly and original way. We will also discuss the issue of publishing your work. Which aspects of your research would make for a good published paper? How do you choose the academic journal that is most appropriate to your research and what is a good balance between academic and non-academic outlets? How do you pull together a publishable paper from an emerging research project?

Defending your Ideas and Responding to Critique

Session 3: Tuesday August 14 (10am to 12noon), Jean Martin Room, Beryl Rawson Building

This session will offer some strategies on how to deal with critique and, specifically, how to use it to sharpen your perspective, your theoretical grounding and methodological choices. It will be an especially hands-on session, in which you can gain some practice in rigorously dealing with critique and with defending and developing your ideas.

Public Impact and Engagement

Session 4: Tuesday October 16 (10am to 12noon), Jean Martin Room, Beryl Rawson Building

We hear a lot about public impact and engagement but exactly what this means can be unclear. This session will give you a chance to work through with your peers the questions of what counts as ‘industry engagement’ for your research, who your ‘public’ is, diverse ways in which sociology can relate to the public and ways to market the innovative aspects of your research.