Building research capacity through support for PopFest

4 - 6 July 2016 - CPC continued to support the annual PopFest Conference by providing additional funding to the organisers and supporting student attendance.

This year we were pleased to sponsor PhD student Helen Packwood to attend. Helen, whose thesis explores changing ethnic identities of young people in Scotland, is closely linked with CPC's research aims having previously worked with CPC on the 'Migration and the constitutional future of Scotland' project prior to starting her doctorate.

Helen was excited to be attending PopFest and presenting her latest research. Speaking about the opportunity prior to the conference she commented: "As a first year postgraduate student I'm quickly learning the value of connecting with other researchers. PopFest is an exciting opportunity to meet with (and learn from) a wide range of academics and researchers. My experience as a Research Fellow with the Centre for Population Change has taught me the value of working across subject boundaries.

I am particularly looking forward to presenting my paper 'Mind the educational attainment gap, placing child poverty and ethnicity'. This work is seeking to develop a critical understanding of how child poverty interacts with issues of ethnicity, migration and educational attainment. The research aims to contribute to research and wider policy debates around integration and inequalities. You can find a sixty-second overview of the project here."

PopFest is an annual Population Studies conference organised by postgraduate students for postgraduate students from across the UK and Europe. It brings together Social Science researchers from various disciplines such as Demography, Human Geography, Sociology, Social Statistics, Politics and other related fields. This year was the 24th Annual PopFest and was hosted by the University of Manchester.

The 2016 programme was packed with opportunities for postgraduate students to present their work and meet colleagues working in a range of fields from across the world. The conference provided a relaxed, supportive environment for students to come together to present work, attendees had an excellent opportunity to discuss their work with their peers and get feedback.

PopFest is organised in conjunction with the British Society for Population Studies (BSPS). You can find out more information on the conference on the PopFest website.

Posted 30/06/2016 14:51