Our panellists - Coping with stress and anxiety
Heather Griffiths, Sociology Phd Student
Heather is a third year PhD student in the Department of Sociology, funded by the ESRC. She has a first class honours degree in Sociology from Warwick, having returned to Higher Education after ten years working in the finance industry.
Her broad research interests are in gender and work, work life balance and feminist theory. Her PhD research will look at flexible working policies within the finance sector, and whether such policies will be supported by finance sector culture, as well as how they impact on gender equality and work life balance both at work and in the home.
Heather is an active member of the Centre for the Study of Women and Gender at Warwick, and is currently involved in a project to produce the centre’s first archive, as well as being part of the organising committee for the Graduate Seminar Series.
This year Heather started writing blogs that straddle the personal and professional and have featured as a guest blogger on Researching Sociology @ LSE, PhD Life at Warwick and The Sociological Imagination. As a Correspondent for Piirus, she also write blogs posts on a range of subjects aimed at academic researchers, from advice on live tweeting at conferences to promoting new research findings.
Katryna Kalawsky, postgraduate research student development officer Loughborough University
Dr Kay Guccione, University of Sheffield @kayguccione
Dr Kay Guccione did her BSc, PhD and post-doctoral research in Molecular Biology and then moved swiftly on to work with research staff and students in a learning and development role. She now has a masters degree and 7 years experience in designing mentoring and coaching programmes for researchers, and using coaching opportunities to listen into the varied positive and negative experiences of doctoral students. Her coaching work has centred on working with stuck, stressed and panicking students who are lost somewhere in the thesis writing process. Her current research work enquires into Trust in the student-supervisor relationship.
Find out more about the mentoring programme
Latest article for Research Fortnight — value of a PhD? look beyond the academy
Jo Gilman, Skills and Enterprise Trainer and Coach
Jo’s aim is to help others to become the best that they can be wherever they are looking to develop themselves. Her work involves working with groups of people in workshop type environments and also on a 1:1 coaching basis. She works primarily in Higher Education with staff, research students and also undergraduates.
Jo believes that self awareness, derived from honest, clear communication, with yourself, your family, or your business colleagues is the key to understanding and unlocking most of the issues in life. Her challenge is to help others achieve this to allow them to move forwards.
Jo has also been involved in Vitae Part-time Researcher project, giving helpful hints and tips on how to complete a PhD when working.
