UCL RESEARCH DEPARTMENT OF EPIDEMIOLOGY AND PUBLIC HEALTH

The Early Career Researcher Forum (ECF) is an ongoing and expanding programme of regular seminars for postdoctoral researchers and PhD students across the IEHC Departments. The ECF events provide educational and networking opportunities to a wide audience of IEHC staff and students (both women and men) and encourage interdisciplinary interaction.

The aim of the ECF is to integrate the existing and emerging Institute activities for early career researchers.

One of the examples is a series of monthly talks for postdoctoral researchers and PhD students, which was launched at the Epidemiology and Public Health Department in July 2013, with the support of colleagues from the Departments of Applied Health Research, Infection and Population Health, and Primary Care and Population Health. These seminars are currently run by the members of the ECF, whose membership includes PhD students and Research Staff. In February 2015 the ECF organised a one-day seminar “Get your career going!” with presentation topics including teaching in higher education, how to transfer skills, and careers in policy-making.

The ECF has organised roughly 20 seminars since 2013 (full list is below). Seminars and workshops have focused on academic job search, authorship and publishing, patient and public involvement in research, using social media in research (including film), how best PhD students can prepare for their viva, and oral and poster presentations. Forthcoming events will address academic career planning and development, mixed methods research, literature and systematic reviews, and other topics which are highly relevant for students and individuals early in their career.

Another example is a monthly PhD and junior researcher journal club, organised by Sungano Chigogora and Elisa Pineda, facilitated by Panos Demakakos, a senior member of staff at IEHC. This group meets in an informal setting to critically evaluate recent articles in epidemiology and public health.

If you would like to participate in the ECF activities, share the information about the events at your Department, or suggest topics for future seminars, please get in touch via email (iehc-ecf@ucl.ac.uk). The ECF twitter handle is @IEHC_ECF.

The Epidemiology & Public Health Journal Club invites you to join them on the third Wednesday of every month!

With the aim of improving our critical analysis and methodology skills, the Journal Club discusses papers from a broad range of topics on health promotion and disease prevention. The club is run by PhD students Sungano Chigogora and Elisa Pineda, and is facilitated by Dr Panos Demakakos (Senior Research Fellow).

All early career Researchers and PhD students from across the Faculty are welcome to attend.  For more information, please contact Sungano ( s.chigogora.11@ucl.ac.uk) or Elisa (elisa.pineda.14@ucl.ac.uk ).