Samuel Brown wins WISERD Poster Prize 2017 sponsored by the Learned Society of Wales

 

The Learned Society of Wales has announced ESRC-funded PhD student, Samuel Brown from Swansea University, as winner of the WISERD Annual Conference 2017 Poster Prize. He receives an award of £200 from the Learned Society of Wales.

Samuel is in the 3rd year of his PhD which looks at the impact of major life events on an adult’s life satisfaction. His poster is entitled, ‘A look into the anticipation and adaptation of well-being from changes in employment contracts, accounting for social cohesion’. He studies the effects that different employment contracts have on well-being in the UK and evaluates whether civil society and different levels of social cohesion impact upon these effects.

Judging the prize were Learned Society Fellows and WISERD co-directors, Professor David Blackaby, Professor of Economics at Swansea University, Professor Michael Woods, Professor of Human Geography at Aberystwyth University, and Hugh Owen Medal winner Professor Chris Taylor of Cardiff University.

Samuel Brown said: “There were many fantastic posters at the WISERD conference this year, and the fact that mine was chosen was a great joy. It was wonderful to realise that my research was of interest to such an esteemed audience and I am proud to have had the opportunity to share my research with them. The certificate will act as a reminder to me of the relevance of my research and will hopefully encourage me to push through when it gets difficult.”

Professor Chris Taylor said: “This year’s WISERD Poster Prize saw strong entries from universities across Wales, but Samuel’s poster demonstrated three important qualities that make for a successful poster – concise, visual and accessible. His poster presented results on just one aspect of his work – that of divorce – and used a very effective way of communicating these results in a visual and accessible form.”

The poster exhibition was open for all delegates to view throughout the WISERD Annual Conference, which took place at Bangor University on the 5th and 6th of July. This event is Wales’s largest social science conference and sees academics from a diverse range of disciplines join colleagues outside academia to explore the variety of multidisciplinary research being carried out across Wales and beyond. It also provides an opportunity to support WISERD’s early career researchers and PhD students.

This year’s conference theme was ‘The Decade of Disruption’ and delegates took part in sessions covering topics ranging from localities and participation, and education and the civil sphere, to political disruption, and migration, religion and welfare.