Call for papers: PhD During COVID-19

Covid-19 has led to global change on a level rarely witnessed over the last century. The devastating impact of this pandemic on the world has yet to be fully understood. As new strains evolve, we will continue to be faced with other challenges which will shape both our research and who we are as researchers.  

The journal team felt it important to take a moment to pause, to acknowledge this time, and to reflect on the how the pandemic has shaped the research we have undertaken across the design for health community.  We are interested in exploring the creative strategies, insights and innovative approaches that design for health researchers have adapted and adopted during the pandemic.

Design For Health invites short papers from all those involved in undertaking, supervising or examining PhDs during the pandemic in relevant disciplines i.e. researchers working at the intersections of design, health, science, creative practice, wellbeing and related fields.

We are particularly interested to receive contributions from PhD students and early career researchers. Accepted papers will be published over the next two volumes of the journal.

It is hoped that through this special theme this we can address questions such as:

• What did it mean to do a PhD during the pandemic?
• How was design-led research able to respond to the extreme circumstances we found ourselves facing?
• Were researchers able to find novel, innovative solutions to the constraints they faced, leading to new discoveries and avenues for investigation?
• What did the pandemic mean in terms of our understanding of inter-disciplinarity?
• What were some of the moral and ethical challenges we faced when working with the public and patients where physical contact was impossible?
• How did researchers undertake practice-based research when they were unable to access the workshop, lab or community?
• What messages do we want to communicate to future generations about this research?