Discussing views on infant development in a community

‘If you’re a student, Train and Engage is the best way to do your first project’.

PhD student Laura Kischel applied for a £1,000 UCL Train and Engage grant to set up a project aimed at improving understanding of infant brain development among project workers and parents in a community in rural Gambia. She talks about what she learned from the experience, and why she would encourage other PhD students to take the plunge and get involved with public engagement and outreach.

Train and Engage is a scheme for postgraduate research students run by UCL Public Engagement. You attend public engagement training (this takes place once a year, in the Spring term) and then apply for grants of up to £1,000 to deliver a specific engagement project. The sessions are interactive and challenging, feature group and individual work and help you to develop your own ideas for public engagement in your research.

I had an idea to adapt a training workshop on infant brain development, which is usually run by psychology undergraduates, to be delivered by health workers involved in the BRIGHT project in Keneba, Gambia, which is led by Professor Clare Elwell (UCL Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering), my PhD supervisor. This was a bit daunting, as no one had ever applied to do anything quite like this before, but Professor Elwell and the whole team in Gambia were on board, and keen to make it work.

The project was a great success, and I’m really proud of what we achieved. The team members acquired a lot of new learning around mental health issues which will help them deliver better care to the community, and feedback from parents was very positive. We had whole families coming along and engaging with the sessions, and some really lively question and answer sessions where we were able to dispel a lot of myths and fears (for example, about whether epilepsy is contagious). A lot of the fathers were also village elders and therefore very influential – they were keen to go back to their villages and spread the word.

As for me, the experience wasn’t just fun – it was invaluable. I am now at the stage where I am interpreting data from my research and it is really useful knowing what the perceptions are in the population I’m working with. It has helped me, as a researcher, to contextualise my findings. If you are a student, I would say that Train and Engage is the best way to deliver your first project. You get so much support and training and it’s a great first step into public engagement.

The next training session is scheduled for Spring Term 2019, so if you have an idea you’d like to get off the ground, you have plenty of time to prepare.

Find out more about Train and Engage.