On Thursday 26th February 2016, we held our first ever PubhD Newcastle!
Over 20 researchers from across the North East made their way to the perfectly-named ‘Library’, an upstairs area at City Tavern, and settled in for an engaging evening of PhD chat.
Faced with just 10 mins to explain their PhD topic, our amazing speakers did a fantastic job. First up, we had Lucy Hatt, of Newcastle Business School. Lucy provided us with a fascinating insight into the idea of ‘entrepreneurship’ and ‘threshold concepts’. Lucy’s work resonated with a number of our attendees, who said they saw parallels with their own disciplines. Lucy was followed by Tracy Kirk, doctoral student at Northumbria Law School. Tracy’s work explores the rights of adolescents and her passion for this topic was clear for all to see. Tracy’s talk encouraged a very useful discussion about methodology. Finally, we Chris Simmonds, also of Northumbria Law School, spoke about his work as a clinical legal educator and the conceptualisation of the phrase ‘social justice’. Chris led us in a lively discussion about unmet legal need in our local area – and how law clinics could look to fill gaps in provision.
We had nothing but positive feedback from members of the audience. A relaxed, fun atmosphere – we had lots of mingling and got chatting during the breaks. We were also delighted to be joined by Professor Roy Sandbach (@profRoys) and Dr Elaine Hall (@respartnersedu), both of whom provided excellent & supportive tips about PhD study to our speakers and others in the room.Some of us even stayed after the talks were over for a few more drinks and lively chat about the ups and downs of doing a PhD. Thank you to everyone for making the inaugural PubhD Newcastle go off with a bang!
Lots of people were keen to know when the next PubhD Newcastle would be. Watch this space – an announcement is coming very soon…
pubhdnewcastle.wordpress.com 
It was a superb event – the presenters were informative and open to questions (and there were some very good and challenging ones). I enjoyed myself very much, learning about different epistemological positions on content areas I (think I) know about and meeting totally new areas of enquiry. There was a fantastic turnout of students, good beer and chat. I hope more supervisors can be there next time!
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