A ‘day in the life’ of a SEGS Graduate Research Assistant
Since 2020, the Social, Economic and Geographical Sciences (SEGS) department has been running a six-month graduate research assistant programme.
This programme, open to recent university graduates, allows participants to engage with and help deliver a range of interdisciplinary research within the SEGS department.
With projects ranging from eye tracking visual attention to landscapes, exploring teenage girls’ engagement with the outdoors, and creating virtual reality tours, this programme provides graduates with valuable experiences, serving as a bridge between their degrees and their future roles in academia or the wider world.
Speaking about the current Grad RA’s, Keith Marshall, Environmental Social Scientist within the SEGS department, said: “The GradRAs brought their own skills and enthusiasm to meaningfully support the work of SEGS colleagues. This was across a range of tasks, from contributing to data collection to stakeholder engagement, analysis, report drafting, and more. Just as importantly, they quickly became an integral part of the SEGS family.”
“Day in the life”
To provide further insight into the projects undertaken over the last six-months, the communications team have been working with the current GradRAs to create “day in the life” and “Q&A” videos which can be viewed below. These videos are a good opportunity to not only gain an understanding of the valuable work undertaken as part of this programme but also to get to know each of the GradRA’s as they embark on their journey in the professional world.
The GradRAs were also invited to give short talks to SEGS colleagues on their undergraduate dissertations in the last week of February. After some peer-to-peer training, they each delivered a 5-minute talk during the hour-long session.
The talks were all a success, inspiring interesting questions and discussions, enabling the graduates to gain useful experience presenting their work and a chance to reflect on the progress and impact they have made throughout the programme.
Five of the current graduate research assistants are expected to continue working at the Hutton, and the next intake of GradRA’s will join in September 2025.
You can learn more about last year’s assistants in this blog post.
Find out more about their experiences, what they’ve learned and what they plan to do next by reading their thoughts on their placement below.
Blog by Emily Foster, Communications Assistant
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog post are the views of the author, and not an official position of the institute or funder.
