Forty six students attended a two-week summer school in quantitative methods at the University from 18-30 June.

The two weeks form part of the University’s Q-Step centre’s programme, where students take a summer school so they can continue onto our degrees with minor in Quantitative Research. The programme forms part of a country wide initiative to address the shortage of quantitative skills amongst social science undergraduates in the UK. And this year our University of Kent students were joined by three external students from the UK, Hong Kong and the Nuffield foundation’s placement programme.

During the two weeks, students were given an introduction to quantitative methods, as well as having an opportunity to get to know both lecturers and teaching staff at the Q-Step centre. The two weeks consisted of teaching and social events – the latter of course coloured by the world championships. In addition to traditional seminars and lectures, the students were very lucky to attend two engaging guest seminars given by Dr Renee Luthra from the University of Essex and Rima Saini from City University reporting on their studies which relate to themes within the programme: ethnicity, race and discrimination.

Students showed great enthusiasm by interrogating and questioning these topics both in the expert seminars and in their own projects. The last day of summer school was our conference presentation day where student presentations were of a very high level- a perfect wrap up of a both socially and intellectually stimulating experience.

Thank you to all the students and to our excellent assistant lecturers Josh Townsley, Eva Sigurdardottir and Gianna Eick and Victoria Schoen for making it a great experience.