Connecting and promoting the development research community
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Development Studies Association Connecting and promoting the development research community |
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Study Group Convenors PageThis page is designed to hold information for study group convenors. Contact details for more informationSpecific study group enquiries: Study Group Co-ordinator, Andrew Sumner (email sumnerap@lsbu.ac.uk ). General DSA enquiries: Frances Hill, Executive Director. Email: admin@devstud.org.uk, Telephone: 01288 331360 Study Group Guidelines for Convenors - please read first!Please go to the Guidelines Page. These are the general guidelines applicable from 1st January 2005 and are essential reading for all convenors. DownloadsStudy group expense claim form (also available on the study groups page of the DSA website). Budget protocol form. Fill this in to approve spending in advance (see funding question below for more details). Report of previous year's activities and plan for next year. This form need to be filled in every year for the SG co-ordinator's report. If you don't fill it in you risk your group's funding for the following year. (Don't worry - it's a short excel form.) Frequently asked questions
What does being a study group convenor involve?This varies from group to group and depends on what activities you organise. Groups are expected to hold at least one meeting a year, though many hold more than one meeting. Some groups work through email discussion lists, and some even collect together papers and publish books. Group activity is very much up to you, but we will offer support wherever we can. Convenors do need to fill in an annual report on group activity and a business plan each year. These are necessary so that we can keep track of where DSA funding is going, but they are kept as short as possible. You will also need to fill in a budget protocol form for approval if you are planning any events. Most groups keep in touch by email, so you should inherit an email list from the previous convenor. If you don't, contact the DSA Secretariat to try and track it down for you. If you are convening a new group, it is a good idea to set a list up and keep it somewhere secure. If you are a new convenor, you should read the study group guidelines (opens in Word). How do people join a study group?Usually you will get an email from somebody asking to join your group. You don’t need to tell us about any new members, just add them to your email list (or other records). Some convenors set up a standard email reply as a response – this might be handy if you would like to send new members information about the group, or if you email the list quite infrequently. How you operate this system is completely up to you. If you would like any advice on anything like filtering emails automatically into a study group email folder/managing email distribution lists etc you can always contact the DSA Secretariat for help – we don’t want you to get bogged down with the admin. Do you have to be a DSA member to join a study group? How do I check?Anybody can join any number of study groups. Please do help us by encouraging/persuading people to become members whenever possible though! The majority of DSA income is from membership fees, so the more members we have, the better we can be. As part of this money goes to fund study groups, we are keen that the people who do pay the subs don’t end up subsidising the people who don’t. There are reduced fees for concessions and postgraduate students can have one year’s free trial membership, so membership shouldn’t be prohibitively high. If you are organising an event and are charging a fee or an increased fee for non-members, the DSA Secretariat can provide you with an alphabetical list of members to check names against. If somebody asks to join DSA when they contact you about your study group, please just forward the email to the DSA Secretariat to be dealt with. Can I get any help publicising events?Yes. Most convenors keep email distribution lists of their own to let current SG members know about their events, but you can reach the entire DSA membership by adding your group’s news to our website and our monthly email newsletter. To do this, just email the information you want sent out to the DSA Secretariat. The email newsletter goes out at the beginning of each month, but updates can be added to the website at any time. How do I add information to our webpage?All study groups have a page on the DSA website. This space can be used for information about recent or forthcoming events, papers from meetings, or links to topic-specific research. You can use the page however you want. To add information, just email it to the DSA Secretariat. This can be a useful way of keeping email traffic down. For example, if you are organising a meeting you can keep all the information on your web page and send a short email out to let people know that the new call/programme/paper is online, rather than sending large attachments to a big list. Funding for study groups and refunds of expensesDSA funds study group activities to help you organise events and refund expenses. Study group funding is decided at the start of each financial year. For 2003/2004 this was £400 per group. Budget protocol forms should be filled in in advance of a meeting and sent to the study group co-ordinator/DSA Treasurer. Without one of these forms, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to refund costs. SG expense claim forms are used to refund costs incurred. You will need to approve all expenses connected with your group's activities in advance. Forms need to be completed, signed by the group convenor and returned to the DSA Secretariat for refund, together with the original receipts. Only current DSA members will be reimbursed. There are more details of what expenses can be refunded on the expense forms, but in general, travel expenses are refunded at the lowest cost available, and priority is available to students or people who don't have access to funding through their organisation. If you need to check how much of your group's funding allocation is left, just contact the DSA Secretariat. The easiest way to pay any costs associated with your group is usually to forward invoices direct to the DSA Secretariat for payment (you will need to have filled out a budget form for this). This saves you organising payment and then claiming it back. What are policy workshops?Policy workshops, or dissemination workshops are one-day events organised to look at a particular topic in detail (eg Fifty years of Development Economics, run by the Economics, finance and development study group in July 2003). They tend to be slightly larger-scale than typical study group meetings, and there are extra DSA funds available to reflect this. Contact the study group co-ordinator for more information.
Page last updated: 23 June, 2006 |