Bloomsbury Colleges Studentship

ABOUT US

IOE is UCL Faculty of Education and Society. Founded in 1902, IOE has been shaping policy and helping government, organisations and individuals navigate a changing society for the last 120 years. We embrace collaboration and excellence to create a future that is inclusive and just, and have been ranked number one for education every year since 2014 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject. The Department of Culture, Communication and Media (CCM) is a department of IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society. It is committed to excellence in teaching, research and consultancy in the areas of: Media and Cultural Studies, Art, Design and Museology; Academic writing; English education: Applied Linguistics; Music Education; Multimodality studies; Learning with Digital Technologies. IOE, UCL Faculty of Education and Society are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded three year doctoral studentship, starting 01/10/2024.

Person Specification

Applications are invited for the Bloomsbury Colleges Studentship. Funded by the UCL, Bloomsbury and East London Doctoral Training Partnership (UBEL DTP). This is a unique opportunity to pursue a doctoral study on the communication between families of critically ill patients and staff in the Intensive Care Unit. You will be studying under the supervision of Jeff Bezemer (professor of communication), Jonathan Smith (professor of psychology) and Tim Bonnici (consultant intensive care physician). Adopting a longitudinal ethnographic and experiential approach, you will (1) observe family-staff encounters over a period of time, exploring, e.g., how conversations are handled, how identities are constructed, how decisions are made; and (2) examine how families and staff experience their evolving relationship, exploring how particular individuals are making sense of the communications and relationships they are having. You will support ICU communities in their local efforts to understand and improve family-staff communication by producing rich, thick descriptions of telling cases that render visible the complexities of communication and developing a language of description around recurring themes in the conversations and accounts of family and staff, facilitating metacommunication (e.g. factors that are perceived to inhibit or promote effective communication). More details about the project are available on demand. Further information about PhDs at UCL is available from: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/departments-and-centres/centres/centre-doctoral-education

About you

Applications are invited from candidates with: 1. A relevant postgraduate degree in the social sciences (e.g. sociolinguistics, psychology, sociology). 2. Experience in and passion for conducting qualitative research. 3. Very good communication and interpersonal skills. 4. Ability to conduct fieldwork around sensitive topics in a high-stakes environment and manage stories of stress, grief, anxiety, and depression. 5. Preparedness to work during out-of-office hours. Desirables include: 6. Research experience in the areas of clinical communication and/or lived experience of health and illness. 7. Demonstrable affinity with clinical care and familiarity with intensive care and/or hospital settings. 8. Experience of applying for research ethics approval from the UK Health Research Authority. Applicants should present evidence against these criteria in their cover letter, using the criteria as subheadings. Eligibility The normal minimum requirement is a Master’s degree from a UK university in a subject appropriate to the programme to be followed, or a qualification of equivalent standard appropriate to the programme to be followed awarded by a university (or educational institution of university rank) outside the UK. The majority of our successful applicants hold a Merit at Master’s level, and may have additional relevant experience.

How to apply:

How to apply: Please clearly mark your applications: Your application should include: 1. The applicant’s Curriculum Vitae. 2. A covering letter including a statement addressing the selection criteria referred to above. Studentship Start Date 1 Oct 2024

OUR COMMITMENT TO EDI

As London’s Global University, we know diversity fosters creativity and innovation, and we want our community to represent the diversity of the world’s talent. We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong. We therefore particularly encourage applications from candidates who are likely to be underrepresented in UCL’s workforce. These include people from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds; disabled people; LGBTQI+ people; and for our Grade 9 and 10 roles, women. Our faculty holds an Athena SWAN Bronze award, in recognition of our commitment to advancing gender equality.