What our supervisors say
Stacy Clemes, Professor of Active Living & Public Health in the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences talks about her research, which centres around encouraging people to sit less and move more.
My research centres around encouraging people to sit less and move more, by finding ways to incorporate more physical activity into peoples’ normal daily routines.
Examples of recent projects include:
- evaluating the feasibility of incorporating sit-to-stand desks in primary school classrooms on children’s’ activity behaviours and learning and behavioural outcomes;
- investigating the impact of sit-to-stand desks on office workers health and work-related outcomes; and
- evaluating the impact of a multicomponent lifestyle behaviour intervention on the health and wellbeing of heavy goods vehicle drivers.
A key influence on my practice is the engagement with relevant stakeholders and end-users of an intended intervention on the development of that intervention. A goal of my work is to develop simple and sustainable interventions that people can adopt to incorporate healthy behaviours (predominately around physical activity and diet) into their daily routines.
User engagement is key in intervention development to ensure what you are proposing is suitable and feasible within the target group.
No matter what the PhD area, my main piece of advice before embarking on a PhD is that the individual must be passionate about their area of research. A PhD can be really hard work if your heart isn’t 100% in the area of study that you have chosen.
Before applying, I would advise speaking to a potential supervisor about research ideas and the potential gaps in the literature within these areas of interest. I would also suggest speaking to current PhD students working in the area to gain an insight on the realities and expectations of this work.
My supervision style can vary depending on the individual PhD student, their circumstances (i.e. whether they are studying full time or part time), and their topic of study. Overall, however, I like to ensure that I provide my PhD students with a supportive and positive working environment. I typically meet with my students fortnightly, although this may depend on the stage that they are at within their PhD.
I like to ensure that my students can take ownership of their work and make sure that the ideas behind the work included in their PhD programmes are developed collaboratively. Throughout the PhD I expect that my students develop their skills to become successful independent researchers by the end.
I encourage my PhD students, where feasible, to publish their work throughout their PhD. Usually my students will conduct a piece of work which is then written up as a scientific paper during their PhD. The text used in the paper is then used as a thesis chapter, with perhaps a bit of editing to ensure it fits within the thesis and facilitates a consistent flow from one chapter to the next.
The Careers Network within the University provides support to PhD students on career options. My colleagues and I also support our PhD students in terms of offering advice regarding the next steps in terms of careers. Where we can we always offer additional opportunities and experiences to our PhD students throughout their studies to enable them to build and strengthen their CV’s.