A fellowship at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST)
My placement in the Built Environment Committee in the House of Lords gave me the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work in a remarkable environment alongside some very distinguished people. I was nervous before I started my placement, but I found that my research skills as a doctoral student were actually very transferable to a professional workplace, and enabled me to tackle the challenges of a high-level, fast-paced Westminster office. I used my experience as a researcher to devise and deliver a complex stakeholder management project, conducting data collection and quantitative analysis and then using this to produce a communications strategy for the Committee to follow. When I presented this project to the wider Committee office at the end of my placement, my colleagues were impressed and said they found my approach really useful. At the same time, I got to develop my communication and teamworking skills, which I hadn’t exercised very much over two years of solo doctoral research. It was a steep learning curve adapting to the pace of work in the Committee and the public-facing nature of their inquiry research, but I left the placement feeling a renewed sense of confidence in my own abilities as a professional. It also gave me invaluable insights into how the policy landscape works, and I intend to apply this knowledge in my future career as an academic: being able to conduct high-impact research and target it towards specific legislative frameworks in order to make positive social change is a major ambition of mine, and thanks to this placement, it feels ten times more achievable. Especially as someone from a Northern working-class background, I never thought this kind of career opportunity would be available to me, and I’m so grateful to the GUDTP and my host institution for facilitating this placement and broadening my horizons.
