As the final week of the project comes to a close, I find myself surprised by how much I’ve learnt in so little time – my approach to research and academic writing has developed so much: I had no idea how to structure a research article two months ago, and now we are submitting our final draft tonight! We’ve learnt the hard way the importance of setting clear deadlines for individual sections, and the need to consider the timetables of all the different stakeholders involved. This became especially apparent when we submitted our survey to the schools one week before they broke up for summer holidays, and unfortunately only received six responses. However, we also learnt how to overcome this setback, as we needed to rapidly reframe our study into a pilot, which can be used by future researchers (potentially future Laidlaw scholars) to learn from our mistakes and develop a blueprint for more successful dialogue with local communities in future.

I’ve especially enjoyed the opportunity to form my own opinions on contested fields of study such as ethics and character – it’s a real departure from my degree course, and without the Laidlaw scholarship I may have never been exposed to this rich body of literature and research. More than that, however, I’ve enjoyed the friendships I’ve made in my research group and the broader Oxford cohort of Laidlaw scholars (and broader even than that as they introduced me to their own friends as well) – it’s heartening to see how quickly we’ve developed a community spirit and how mutually supportive we’ve all been even as our individual workloads pile up, and I very much hope I will get to see you all again next year, either as part of the longitudinal study, or planning our LIAs, or just for fun!