Scottish Graduate School of Social Science –
Summer School 2016
Pathway Convenors Group - Call for event proposals
Aim of Summer School and Dates
The Scottish Graduate School of Social Science organises an annual Summer School, open to doctoral
students in social science disciplines across Scotland, extending to students from throughout the UK/EU
and overseas. The Summer School complements the other Advanced Training events which we fund
throughout the year and is an opportunity for Scotland to showcase its wide range of expertise in
disciplinary and interdisciplinary social science, and transferable skills advanced training programmes
for postgraduate students.
The ESRC has suggested a broad definition of advanced training:
“[advanced training is] additional to core training within an individual [doctoral training]
pathway. Some advanced training will be discipline or subject specific, whilst other training may
have a wider application. What constitutes advanced training will differ between discipline
areas. A method or theory considered to be advanced in one area of social science, may be
deemed to be core to another.”
Events at the SGSSS Summer School should thus strive to be truly ‘advanced’ in their offerings.
Summer School 2016 continues in the broad line of the last four years where we aim to provide popular
courses and events for doctoral social science students, with a preference for interdisciplinary courses
and events likely to be compatible across pathways. Events should dovetail with (but not duplicate)
local university provision and the year round SGSSS Advanced Training programme. It will therefore be
useful to consider what courses are available locally for your students that Summer School offerings
potentially duplicate? For example, is there local NVivo training? Are there local quantitative methods
classes? Are there any other Software classes available locally? What could make any Summer School
input more relevant to students? What proposals do students have?
As participation is now required at Summer School for ESRC funded students, it makes especially good
sense to involve students and supervisors in the development of the programme. This will enable all
greater ownership of summer school content. We would appreciate it if you could therefore distribute
this document to all students and supervisors in your pathway and graduate schools.
Summer School 2016 will take place in Edinburgh on 7-9 June 2016.
Call for Proposals
Proposals for courses or events are invited. Course or event proposals should have a detailed outline
and a nominated teacher /organiser from within the SGSSS institutions, who should be prepared to
undertake the role without payment. There is a relatively small budget to cover the costs of
speakers/contributors (in terms of their time) from outside of SGSSS HEIs. Some indication of the
attractiveness of the course/event to students outside of the pathway/discipline from which the event
is being proposed should be provided. Outline proposals are acceptable with the expectation that they
will be worked up with input from the SGSSS team.
Expressions of interest should be submitted by 18 November. Finalised proposals should be
submitted by 11 December.
Next steps
Proposals will be evaluated during December and the Events team will get back to proposers of courses
and events. Criteria for evaluation and prioritisation of proposals will include:
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Take up and student evaluation of course/event in previous Summer Schools
Conceptual integrity, quality of teachers/facilitators – relevance to the summer school themes
(‘impact’, career development, making research count beyond the academy)
Attractiveness across several disciplines/ pathways.
Appendix 1. Guidance for Proposals
Summer School 2016 – three themes though the programme
The 2016 Summer School will be held over three days in Edinburgh from Tuesday 7 June to Thursday 9
June. There will be discipline/pathway-led events (discipline-specific and interdisciplinary), transferable
skills training, and a new programme of events called ‘When methods meet’. The ‘When Methods
Meet’ theme of events will bring together experts representing two different social science methods for
short, focussed discussions of the potential for these two methods to be used in combination. These
will include pairings that combine quantitative and qualitative methods (such as social network analysis
and biographical analysis, or experiments and interviews) but will also feature pairings that combine
two qualitative or two quantitative methods. The aim is to video record these events for the SGSSS
Virtual Learning Environment. There will be a separate call for proposals for When Methods Meet
events.
Proposal details
Discpline / Pathway-led events will still be at the heart of the 2016 Summer School. We therefore invite
you as pathway academics in the formal DTC structure and academics at Abertay, GCU, QMU, SRC, UHI
and UWS to put forward innovative ideas for running pathway-led events. We would also encourage
you to get doctoral students involved in designing and organising events. We welcome disciplinespecific advanced training events but would also like to encourage training which will be attractive to
students from a range of disciplines; this could possibly be achieved through either developing truly
interdisciplinary sessions in collaboration with one or more other discplines/pathways and/or using a
theme (either a method or a topic) with broad appeal. In addition, you may wish to work with nonacademic organisations to develop an event; this can be very attractive to students as it emphasises the
application of research beyond the academy.
Events can run for one half-day, a full day or across two days.
As in 2015, the SGSSS Events team will handle the practical elements of the organisation including room
bookings, contacting students and external speakers about travel and accommodation, stationery and
AV requests, and catering.
Please note that the daily rate charging policy for students will continue in 2016. This directly
supports/contributes towards the costs of running of the Summer School.
Expressions of interest should be sent to events@socsciscotland.ac.uk no later than 18 November.
Please put “Summer School 2016” in the subject line, and include a contact phone number in your
email. Finalised proposals should be submitted by 11 December. Once expressions of interest for
sessions have been received from pathways we will be in touch with event proposers and some
changes may be requested in order to ensure wide appeal and to achieve, as far as is possible, a
coherent programme.
Title of Event – this will be published in the programme. Titles should be clear in what the event is
offering (e.g. “Innovative Research Methods for Social Anthropology Students”, not “Research
Methods”) and to which audience. As noted above, sessions can be discipline-specific (and this should
be made clear), but we would strongly encourage pathways to offer sessions that are of interest to a
range of students.
Event Description – please describe your event as fully as possible. Things to include might be how the
event will be run, the target audience (see above), format of the event (e.g. lecture, workshop,
breakout sessions, poster session, masterclass), speakers, any required pre-requisites etc. Student
feedback has recommended that event descriptions should provide sufficient details to allow students
to choose relevant events to their needs. In addition, feedback indicated clearly that students really
enjoy, and gain from, sessions with lots of opportunity for interaction.
Preferred date(s) of event and duration – please indicate on which date and for how long your event will
run. We appreciate your flexibility on this where at all possible.
Maximum number of student participants – please indicate the maximum number of students you are
happy to have attend at your event as this is the limit we will place on registrations.
Suitability – please let us know whether you wish to restrict your event to students within specific
pathways although we strongly encourage interdisciplinarity, and sessions with broad appeal.
Budget Breakdown – please include an estimated budget for your event (excluding catering and student
travel and accommodation costs, both of which will be arranged centrally by the Events Team). To help
with this, we have put together the following guidelines for Summer School events:
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External Speaker Costs – SGSSS will cover the cost of economy class travel and
accommodation for speakers travelling from outwith Edinburgh. The SGSSS Events
team will handle these practicalities with the external speakers directly once names
have been confirmed. It may be possible for the SGSSS to arrange for honoraria to be
paid to external speakers outside the SGSSS network. If this is something that may be
required, please indicate this clearly as this must be confirmed with us in advance.
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Academic Expenses – SGSSS will cover the cost of economy class travel and in necessary
cases, accommodation, for academics travelling from outwith Edinburgh. The SGSSS
Events team will handle these practicalities with academics directly. Please note that
the SGSSS will not provide payment to academics from SGSSS partner HEIs for
contributing to the Summer School events.
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Stationery – The SGSSS will provide required stationery which is requested in a timely
fashion.
Please note that we will not cover:
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Payments to academics (for their time) from within SGSSS partner HEIs;
Reading materials other than photocopying costs;
First class travel unless specifically cleared in advance with SGSSS Events Team;
Taxi fares unless specifically cleared in advance with SGSSS Events Team.
Equipment requirements – please include a list of the equipment required for your event (audio visual
or otherwise).
Appendix 2. Proposal Form SGSSS Summer School 2016
Please start off by emailing events@socsciscotland.ac.uk by 18 November 2015 to express an interest in
running an event for the Summer School 2016.
This form should then be completed and returned to events@socsciscotland.ac.uk by 11 December
2015.
Discipline/Pathway/Graduate School(s):
Name and contact details of organiser(s):
Title of event:
Event details - please give an outline of the advanced training event you are planning, between 200 and
300 words. Please note that this information will be made available to students in order to aid them in
selecting which events they would like to attend.
Preferred date(s) of event and duration (i.e. half-day, full day, two days)
Maximum number of student participants:
Is this event suitable for students outside the host discipline/pathway?
appropriate)
YES/NO (delete as
Expected cost of event and basic budget breakdown (i.e. estimated travel and accommodation for
speakers, any software fees, stationery etc):
Equipment Requirements (e.g. A/V needs, computer lab):
Thank you for your interest in contributing to the 2016 Summer School!