The European Educational Research Association Summer School 2022

Donna received a bursary from the West Midlands Branch to help with the cost of attending this event. A number of these are available each year for any relevant conference, please see the Awards & Funding section  for bursary applications.

I attended the European Educational Research Association (EERA) summer school on 'Research design from scratch: Making sense of the whats, whos and hows of your investigation' at the University of Porto, Portugal from 11th to 15th July 2022, with the support of a BPS West Midlands Branch bursary.  

The EERA summer school is a competitive and highly prestigious event for doctoral researchers in the field of education, and I was delighted to be selected following peer review of my PhD project on mental health problems in first generation university students.

The week-long residential summer school programme included plenary sessions for all 70 participants on research design (Monday) and ethics and reflexivity (Thursday).  In addition, each day there were two workshop/small group sessions of 1.5 hours in which we discussed and developed our research designs with five other PhD researchers and two tutors.  

On Wednesday, there was a field trip to the University of Minho in Braga for workshops and presentations from various research groups, and a visit to Bom Jesus (a famous pilgrimage site). On the last day (Friday) we each gave a 10 minute presentation on the research design we had refined over the course of the summer school, and obtained feedback from PhD researchers and two tutors who were unfamiliar with our work.  

In addition, there were many opportunities to network and socialise with summer school participants and staff during coffee breaks, lunches and evening activities, including a port reception on Monday and a farewell dinner on Thursday. 

I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to attend the summer school.  The workshop/small group sessions were so valuable, both intellectually challenging and stimulating, and my PhD research design benefitted hugely from the input of my summer school colleagues and tutors.  

In addition, I thoroughly enjoyed meeting PhD researchers from many different universities in Europe and forming meaningful connections throughout the summer school – my tutorial group resolved to keep in touch and support each other with our respective academic and personal journeys.  

The summer school was expertly organised and hosted by the University of Porto - a great programme of events and activities, lovely staff and delicious food - and Porto is such a beautiful city.  I would highly recommend the EERA Summer School to any doctoral researchers in the field of education.  The call for the 2024 summer school, including details of the host university and theme, will be announced on the EERA website in November 2023.

With huge thanks to BPS West Midlands Branch for the bursary which partially funded my attendance at the EERA summer school (along with Homerton College, University of Cambridge).

Author Bio

Donna Smith is a PhD researcher in the Psychology, Education and Learning Studies (PELS) Research Group at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge.  She is a member of the Wellbeing and Inclusion Special Interest Group and her research focuses on mental health problems in first generation university students.  Donna is a member of the BPS West Midlands Branch (living in Shropshire) and she is the postgraduate representative for the BPS Psychology of Education Section.