I participated in LSE GROUPS in Summer 2017 over the course of two weeks. After my written application outlining my motivations to take part, I was randomly assigned into a group. My team was made up of 5 students of diverse academic backgrounds. Collectively, we were studying international relations, philosophy, politics, maths, statistics, and economics. This was typical of all teams, allowing us the opportunity to learn from each other too.
The theme was ‘Uncertainty’ and the challenge that my group faced was to produce an original research project in this theme within two weeks. The project took the form of a written report and a presentation. The two weeks were structured in such a way that meant we could attend extra skills sessions alongside our independent research time. These sessions included learning how to conduct quantitative and qualitative analysis, produce literature reviews, and structure reports.
Once my group and I met on the first Monday, we introduced ourselves to each other and shared our interests, before drafting some ideas for what we understood by ‘Uncertainty’. We were torn between two topics, before eventually agreeing on terrorism. With the help of our supervisor, we shared our ideas on what areas of terrorism we could research, before formulating our research question. The process of discussing an idea and formulating a research question helped me a huge amount two years later when I needed to formulate my own research question for my final year research project.
We had intermittent deadlines during the two weeks for submitting our abstract, literature review, final report, and a copy of our presentation. This required effective planning with my team members to ensure we met these deadlines. One thing I loved about GROUPS is that everyone there is genuinely curious and enjoys the process of researching, so this process was quite fun!
During our year, there was, unfortunately, a terror attack in London. This posed a serious challenge for our research. Not only was this a hugely emotional incident, but this posed a challenge for research ethics. It would be difficult to conduct in-person interviews about this topic. We then discussed a new research methodology between ourselves to ensure we could still conduct our research whilst respecting the ethics of research. This process taught us a lot about research ethics, something which is always relevant when conducting research at any stage in one’s research career. It is something I remembered to be conscious of when I conducted my own research later on.
At the end of the fortnight, we presented our findings to a conference of approximately 100 people, which was comprised of the other participants, the supervisors, and a few members of staff from LSE. This could feel intimidating, but it was not at all – everyone was really supportive and wanted to learn from each other. The two weeks ended in an intellectually diverse and thought-provoking conference.
The research skills I gained during LSE GROUPS, particularly of research ethics and conducting qualitative and quantitative analysis, were relevant to me throughout the rest of my time at LSE, and I will no doubt continue to use and develop them as I conduct more research in the future. I fully recommend it to other students if they get the opportunity.
My group’s research project is available online.