Category: Academic insights

Meet Dr Naomi Millner, Programme Director for Human Geography: Society and Space, in the Faculty of Life Sciences.

 

 

Tell us about your journey into academia…

I completed my undergraduate degree in modern and medieval languages, but really loved engaging with social scientific questions and methodologies through some optional units in the second half of my degree. After a year taking part in voluntary community work and some paid work as a Research Assistant on a project about ‘learning to learn’ with young people who’d dropped out of education, I realised that I missed learning but wanted to develop my profile to explore issues of social inequality and processes of social change.

I scoured master’s programmes all over the country, but focused on Bristol as a city I found culturally and politically interesting. This led me to discover the MSc in Society and Space based in Geographical Sciences – a programme I now direct! I applied for a ‘1+3 award’ from the ESRC (Economics and Social Sciences Research Council) to study for a PhD as well, and was delighted when I was accepted onto the programme. That was the beginning of my career in Human Geography!

What’s your favourite thing about teaching on postgraduate taught programmes at Bristol?

Society and Space is a really dynamic course that allows students to explore rich cultural theories and dynamic political debates at the same time as training them in social science research methodologies. I think it’s an unusual programme at this level in that it does equip you with the research skills you’d need to go on to a PhD or a career using social science research skills (quantitative and qualitative), but you also get to go really deeply into the big social and political questions. There are also options to specialise your route through the programme, but these are limited and carefully designed so that you get a well-rounded degree, rather than a ‘pick and mix’ set of options that might not go well together.

What’s your number one top tip for prospective postgraduates?

I’d recommend that prospective students consider what they really want from a master’s degree. There are quite different options out there and they will suit different kinds of students. It’s important not just to choose a programme based on the academic reputation of the institution or where it is, although these are important factors to consider, but what skills you’ll be learning, and what the balance is between methodological training and units taking you into more theoretical or thematic based units. I think Society and Space really suits students who are looking to combine exposure to cultural theory and philosophical debates with strong methodological training and immersion in contemporary geographical debates. And of course our research culture is top-notch!

 

Meet Dr Gemma Ford, Programme Director for MSc Reproduction and Development in the Faculty of Health Sciences.

 

Tell us about your journey into academia…

I have always been interested in science and biology and initially considered a career in forensic science. However, I found that the more practical-based approach that was employed at my college to study Biology steered me towards a degree with opportunities for exploration and discovery. So, I went on to study an honours degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology which included a year-long research placement within industry.

It was during my undergraduate studies that I found myself being strongly drawn to the field of endocrinology. After my degree, I was lucky to be awarded a Needham Cooper CASE Scholarship which enabled me to study for a PhD in Neuroendocrinology at Bristol and GlaxoSmithKline, looking at the effects of stress and metabolism on hypothalamic neuropeptides. I then moved to Galway, Ireland for my postdoctoral research, maintaining my interest in stress and neuroendocrinology, but also extending my interests into pain medicine. I then became a lecturer in the Neuropharmacology department in Galway.

I really enjoyed training and teaching undergraduate, master’s and PhD students from a variety of different disciplines in Galway, but I saw an opportunity to move back to Bristol and the UK, so took up the post of Lecturer in the Bristol Medical School and I now lead on the master’s in Reproduction and Development.

 

What’s your favourite thing about teaching on postgraduate taught programmes at Bristol? 

I really enjoy getting to know my students and providing them with tailored support throughout their postgraduate journey.  We are lucky that the flexible nature of our programme provides opportunities for our students to continue to work or perform caring responsibilities whilst still being able to study with us for a master’s at the same time. Our unique, blended learning MSc programme attracts a fantastic community of learners (Scientists, Nurses, Midwives, and Clinicians), that come from different countries, medical settings, backgrounds and cultures, and this diversity really enriches our curriculum and provides a multidimensional learning experience for both students and staff.

 

What’s your number one top tip for prospective postgraduate students?

Research the programme and make sure it’s right for you. Talk to the staff, alumni and current students and ask lots of questions before you apply. Does it offer flexible study options? Will it enable you to reach your career goals and aspirations? What jobs or training positions have the alumni gone on to pursue? What types of teaching and learning will be used? What individual support is available to you during your studies?

 

Meet Professor Albert Sanchez-Graells, lecturer at the University of Bristol Law School.

 

Tell us about your journey into academia…

Believe it or not, as a teenager, I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer. But I started getting lost in the abstract world of maths and physics during my A levels, so I eventually decided to study law and business. These are two very ‘real world’ applied fields of study, although there is scope for rather intricate theoretical, ethical and philosophical approaches too! 

After graduation, I went to work as a lawyer for a British multinational law firm, and then for a Spanish industrial company with worldwide operations. After a few very stressful years, I decided to enrol in a PhD programme to follow my passion for economic law, and this opened the door to academia for me. In the 10 years since I finished my PhD, I held academic positions in Madrid, Hull, Leicester and Bristol. This has given me enormous opportunities to engage in exciting teaching and research opportunities, and to build a truly international network of like-minded colleagues. 

 

What’s your favourite thing about teaching on postgraduate taught programmes at Bristol? 

I love teaching at all levels, but postgraduate teaching offers the possibility to engage in the aspects of my field of knowledge closest to my current research. I have recently been researching the impact of digital technologies on several areas of economic law and public governance. Getting to discuss these developments with bright and engaged LLM students always helps me improve my own understanding and push the boundaries of our collective knowledge. Seminar teaching where we can engage with these issues in detail is always energising and a good way to open the door to even more concentrated research efforts, such as through the dissertation. Supervising dissertation work is probably another of the parts of my job that I love. 

 

What’s your number one top tip for prospective PG students?

My top tip would be to know yourself and your interests. Knowing what tickles your brain will help you find the right postgraduate programme for you. This is an intense experience that will have many demands but, if you are doing what you are passionate about, not only will you do better, but you will really get the most out of it. And make sure to do it in a place that supports you and excites you, so you can flourish.

I have found endless reasons to love Bristol, not only the University, but the city and all the opportunities it offers—for me, as a runner and a bit of a foodie anyway! So think about what and where to do it, and then go for your postgraduate programme with all your might. 

 

Meet Professor Pauline Heslop, Programme Director for the MRes Health and Wellbeing.

Tell us about your journey into academia…

I suppose I’ve had a less ‘traditional’ route into academia than some of my colleagues. I started my working life as a nurse, specialising in working with sick children, but that was brought to an abrupt halt by a car accident. I wasn’t able to return to nursing and felt at a bit of a crossroads, not sure what else I wanted to do. I opted to go back to studying, which was hard financially, but absolutely the best thing for me. I studied for a degree as a mature student, then was awarded a scholarship to do a PhD, so I have lots of empathy for people trying to juggle home and family life, living on a tight budget, and seeing friends taking different directions in their own lives. It can be done though – I was awarded my PhD nearly 20 years ago now and have been working at the University of Bristol since. 

 

What’s your favourite thing about teaching on postgraduate taught programmes at Bristol? 

The MRes Health and Wellbeing course, for which I am the Programme Director, combines all my interests – it is research based, focuses on health and wellbeing from a range of different perspectives, and encourages students to think ‘outside the box’. It is one of the five South West Doctoral Training Partnership interdisciplinary pathways that are taught in partnership with the University of Bath, University of the West of England and University of Exeter. This means that students have the opportunity to take optional units from across the partnership, according to their interests. That is potentially a huge benefit to students, and past students speak highly of how this has helped them to develop their research skills and interests. 

 

What are your top tips for prospective postgraduate students?

Thinking about my own experiences and those of the students I support, I’d give my three top tips as the following: 

1. Believe in yourself enough to make it happen. When we set out to learn anything new it can be hard and frustrating at times, but with effort, most of us can achieve what we sometimes don’t think we can….remember those first driving lessons? If you trust in yourself that you can study a postgraduate level, and work hard at it, most people can achieve great things.
2. Work hard but maintain a sense of balance…this is a course about health and wellbeing after all!
3. Take advantage of the opportunities on offer. The University of Bristol provides a wealth of study support and social opportunities for students, so take advantage of them if you can and you will have a richer experience of university life.  

And finally, I’ll sneak one more in…life has changed considerably due to the COVID-19 pandemic and we have all had a chance to rethink what is important to us in life. That might be social contact, a sense of community, a need to feel valued and to have a role to play in society etc. Hold on to those thoughts of yours – they are absolutely about health and wellbeing, the topic of this master’s. 

 

Meet Dr Jo Rose, Senior Lecturer in Education.

 

Tell us about your journey into academia…

I ended up as an academic in the field of education by chance. Age 16, I thought I wanted to be an accountant, as I was good at maths and liked the flexibility the career offered. I then decided that wasn’t “cool” enough (typical teenager!) and so made a different decision to apply to study psychology at university.

I ended up enjoying Social Psychology – both my undergraduate dissertation and subsequent PhD explored collaborative reasoning. As a PhD student, I enjoyed the undergraduate teaching that I’d done and thought that being an academic might be quite good fun. I’d always fancied living in the South West of England, so looked at jobs that I could do at universities in that area. I was fortunate to get the first job I applied for – which was a Research Fellow role in the School of Education at the University of Exeter, working on a project around teacher effectiveness. I knew nothing about this topic, but my background in psychological research methods gave me a good understanding of systematic observation, which was what was needed.

I worked at Exeter for 8 years, on a range of projects which helped me understand more about the context of education, and as time progressed I had more flexibility to explore my own research interests and began to think about the application of collaborative reasoning to the field of education. This is where I really started to become excited by what I was doing – and also started to research the application of psychological ideas to practice. This is what I thought psychology was when I applied to do it as an undergraduate!

I moved to the School of Education at the University of Bristol in 2009, to take up a permanent role – first as a researcher and then as a lecturer. I started teaching on the MSc Psychology of Education programme, considering the application of psychology to educational contexts, and there is an exciting range of research in the School of Education that demonstrates a real commitment to social justice. This made me feel as though I’d found a home for my interests.

 

What’s your favourite thing about teaching on postgraduate taught programmes at Bristol?

I really love leading the master’s portfolio in the School of Education. What particularly excites me is the way that students’ thinking changes as they progress through their master’s programmes. We have a diverse cohort of students – many with years of experience in teaching or related professions. They learn to think about education in a different way, to question and critically reflect on educational practice and policy, and to critically engage with educational ideas and theory.

Our master’s programmes are very much research-led: we teach students about current and classical educational research; we support students to become confident educational researchers; and our teaching methods are informed by educational research. Further, students are taught by tutors who are leading researchers in their own fields – and thus are sharing the latest thinking on their topics. All this supports the transformational experience of the master’s programmes.

 

What’s your number one top tip for prospective postgraduates?

Students who come to our programmes with an open mind, willing to change the way they think about education, willing to engage deeply and critically with theory and research, and willing to use their learning to critically reflect on their own practice as educators, will be best-placed to succeed!

 

Meet Professor Sarah Smith, lecturer in the School of Economics, Finance and Management.

Tell us about your journey into academia…

I am an accidental economist – and academic. My undergraduate degree was Philosophy, Politics and Economics and I specialised in politics. My first job was in political consultancy but I soon realised that economics would provide the tools that would help me to understand the policies that I was interested in.

After doing a master’s at the LSE, I worked at the Institute for Fiscal Studies which was a great combination of academic research and policy analysis. I spent time working in government but saw opportunities in academia for a more flexible career and the luxury of choosing the questions to work on. My first academic job was at the LSE on their master’s in Public Administration, where I really enjoyed teaching economic evaluation methods. Bristol economics department is a perfect fit for me because it has a focus on applied research and research with impact on policy and practice – in health, education and welfare.   

  

What’s your favourite thing about teaching on postgraduate taught programmes at Bristol?

I have taught an economic evaluation course to MSc students at Bristol – it’s great because it’s really applied and gives students powerful tools that they can use later in their careers. As part of the assessment, students designed and presented their own policy evaluation. As well as giving students an opportunity to learn by doing, I found it fascinating to learn about different policies from across the world. Our PGT programme is very diverse, bringing together students from many countries.    

  

What’s your number one top tip for prospective postgraduate students? 

Think about why you’re doing a postgraduate taught degree. Our specialist PGT economics programmes build on an undergraduate degree but they’re also much more tailored to different economics careers – in industry, banking/finance and public policy. You can use the year to build up specialist knowledge and skills – try to tailor it to what you want to do next. 

 

Meet Dave Jarman, Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Tell us about your journey into academia…

Like most of the team at the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, I’ve followed a slightly unconventional path into academia! We actually pride ourselves on the diversity of experience we’ve collectively accumulated! 

I did actually do my master’s degree at Bristol, in the Arts Faculty; an MA in Myth from the Classics department. My passion was for Indo-European Heroic mythology including classical, Celtic, and Viking tales and you’d be surprised how useful that has been along my journey into entrepreneurship and innovation education! 

I’d always done a lot more than just my degree though; I’d been involved in lots of clubs and societies and Students’ Union representation, and I took my passion for education in a slightly different direction. I initially became a skills trainer and development coach in the Students’ Union and later the Careers Service here at Bristol. I was supporting students to run better activities and develop their employability, then I switched into supporting freelancers and start-up entrepreneurs working for the University’s Research and Enterprise Division supporting new social and commercial ventures ranging from healthcare and high-tech ideas to charities and creative freelancers.  

I eventually became the Head of Enterprise Education here at Bristol, chaired the UK’s national network of entrepreneurship educators, and then became the Head of both Careers and Enterprise at a creative arts university just down the road. I got tempted back to Bristol with a switch to the academic side of the house as a Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at what was then a brand new centre in 2016. 

 

What’s your favourite thing about teaching on postgraduate taught programmes at Bristol?

What tempted me back and what I still love most about teaching is helping students develop their ideas into reality. Our MSc Innovation and Entrepreneurship is all about helping students build the skills and develop their half-ideas into workable propositions to change the world. As you can tell from my own journey, my interest is in people and ideas, and the stories people tell about who is allowed to do what and why. There is a lot of mythology around entrepreneurship which I love to debunk and make it accessible to everyone. 

At the centre we teach in a really practical, professionally relevant manner. We provide a toolkit and a mindset to discover, create, develop, evaluate, and prototype ideas that create value. That’s still hugely motivating. 

 

What’s your number one top tip for prospective postgraduate students? 

My top tip for prospective PG students is to show us the trajectory that you’re on. What I mean by this is if we’re going to invest in you and support you we want to see in your application some evidence of your passion and skill so far, and also your ambitions for the future. We want to invest in students who’ve got the motivation to make the most of the course, so show us your initiative, show us your burning interest, show us your hopes for the future and that’ll excite us about wanting to work with you to achieve that. 

 

Meet Dr Mimi Thebo, lecturer in MA Creative Writing.

 

Tell us about your journey into academia…

 I didn’t really want to be an academic – I wanted to be writer! But when I did my own master’s in Creative Writing I found the whole process extremely inspiring. I didn’t just love what happened to my own writing, I loved the whole process. Watching people go from being okay or good-ish writers to being truly wonderful writers was terribly exciting. I just couldn’t walk away from it. 

That was nearly 20 years ago… 

My writing and my teaching grew together. My first book was my MA manuscript. My PhD was done between books three and four but before books six and seven. Book five happened in the middle of it – Drawing Together with Walker Books. It’s for early readers, has sold over 250,000 copies and has been translated into five languages. I think more of my PhD went into that little book with Jess Meserve’s illustrations, than into the actual dissertation novel! Writing, researching and teaching have been the perfect combination for me.  I can’t imagine life without all three of them. 

  

What’s your favourite thing about teaching on postgraduate taught programmes at Bristol?

Bristol is a vibrant, multi-cultural city. As a harbour town, it has always gone out into the world and has always welcomed the world into itself. Many writers live in or around Bristol, and it’s always had a lively literary culture – largely because of its cultural richness as a harbour. 

The University is a well-established Russell Group establishment with superb resources and solid administration practices. That’s why the new master’s in Creative Writing can take chances. We can support the extra administration of admitting both full-time and part-time students. Our admissions department could work out ways for students who hadn’t done a first degree to be credited for their prior knowledge. Estates and timetabling could ensure that we could teach in twilight hours, making parking cheaper and letting people work child care and paid work around their studies. 

To make it even better, this flexible degree is taught in one of the top ten English departments in the UK, and it is exactly the experience and the solid, traditional university infrastructure of Bristol English that allows innovation and widens participation.

  

What’s your number one top tip for prospective postgraduate students for the MA in Creative Writing? 

Read contemporary literature and write. It’s just that simple. If you’ve been doing both for a few years, you might well be ready for a master’s in Creative Writing. It doesn’t matter whether you’re old or young, what your background’s like or whether you’ve had previous study in the subject. If your writing is everything to you, it will also be everything to us.