PhD Cafe

It was a great privilege to take part in the PhD Cafe today. Many thanks go t0 Sona and her team of volunteers who helped today's event come together. 
There were 35 PhD students present, from both University of Greenwich and University of Kent, and across a very broad range of research topics.

We began with a welcome and some refreshments.

Lesley Gould and her colleagues are also to be thanked for all that they have done to establish this room, allocated purely for post-grad researchers.

PhD study is, by its very nature, a rather lonely and isolating role which has a tendency to extract a severe toll on some. So, in order to get people mingling and chatting we played 'Find someone who ...' which everyone really engaged with.

Then it was on to some discussion about how frequently people wanted the cafe to run and what they wanted to do with the time together.

It became very obvious that the need for a social life amongst PhDs is great ... there was much mention of pizza and film nights, etc., with the odd academic twist thrown in.