PhD Student Masterclass

(Friday before the conference week)

PhD students can now apply for one of 15 places to participate in a Masterclass preceding the DSA2021 conference, where they can receive expert feedback on their PhD project and key issues emanating from their work.

All those attending will need to register for the conference, which will take place online during the week following the Masterclass. Please register when Early Bird registration opens at the end of March to signal your intent to attend.

Application process:

Please submit a long abstract (up to 500 words) to conference(at)devstud.org.uk briefly outlining your PhD project and the key challenge you would like to focus on (for example, working with elites, generalising from a small sample, applying conceptual frameworks developed in other settings, etc.).

Deadline for submission of abstracts: March 8th 2021

Applicants will be notified 22nd March with the committee’s decision.

Please note that if you wish to present your paper at the conference after the Masterclass, please submit your paper proposal via the website by midnight (GMT) 8th February.

Masterclass format:

Each successful applicant will have 45 minutes allocated to them in the Masterclass.

This time will be used to give a short presentation (10 mins), engage with feedback from a discussant (5 mins) and participate in a more general discussion around the issues raised. The aim is for participants to receive excellent, focused feedback, from the experts/discussants and audience members, but also to highlight issues that may be common to other researchers in the audience so we can collectively consider how to address them.

Five sessions will run in parallel from 10:00 – 13:00 on the morning of 25 June, chaired by members of the committee that selected the abstracts.

Successful applicants must submit a four page paper by 31st May 2021 expanding on their abstract for the discussants to comment on and to share with people attending the panel ahead of the conference. The paper should be approximately 4 pages long and no longer than 2000 words. Please include a reference list with in text citations. The reference list does not contribute to the 4 pages or 2000 word limit.

Experts and discussants will be academics and practitioners who are part of the DSA.