We are both PhD students in the School of Psychology at the University of Kent in our first and third year, respectively. After completing our Master’s degree at the University of Porto, Portugal, we each became interested in pursuing a PhD at the University of Kent as an internationally recognised institution. We specifically sought Kent because we found a supervisor conducting ground-breaking research in the areas of leadership, diversity, and innovation and we wanted to work with her. Following some energising conversations with our supervisor, we both applied for a PhD position and were both successful in securing funding via a Graduate Teaching Assistantship (GTA). Not only does this help us to fund our studies, but a GTA also affords us with great teaching experience and formal training, which always looks good on a CV.
On arrival we discovered even more about the University of Kent as a research and teaching environment. There is a wide variety of School-run workshops on things like PsychoPy, survey software, and general programming; there are also weekly seminars with international guest speakers; regular meetings among several active research groups; and opportunities for development beyond the PhD such as expert training for press and media, statistics and methods, and networking, etc.. Furthermore, there are plenty of resources and facilities available for students to take advantage of. Especially noteworthy is the diversity of research labs which includes Alcohol and Virtual Reality Laboratories! Essentially, this means we have all we need to do our research.
We have observed that the University of Kent’s reputation lives up to its name, as it produces high quality research from very competent and extremely dedicated researchers from all over the world. Furthermore, all this research is constantly making a strong impact on society and making its way to the public through the media.
Another great thing here is how the postgraduate community is also very socially active. Apart from the usual social gatherings, there are also many University-wide events for people to connect and have fun! Thanks to this, we felt very welcomed at Kent right away. Also, the city of Canterbury is quite lovely and the weather is much better than one might expect!
Therefore, considering its great reputation, high quality research, all the resources and the research environment, we are so pleased we chose the University of Kent – it’s a fantastic place to study. If you’d like to find out more we’d love to hear from you.
Pictured above left to right: Matt, Ana, Catarina, André, Matt and Jonathan.
For information about our postgraduate programmes, please click here.