Newsletter July 2023

Dear Early Childhood community members,

Before you go on a well deserved vacation, we want to finish the academic year with some inspiring news from the community, and inform you about our plans for next academic year (2023-2024).

Blogging workshop (June 27th 2023)

On June 27^th we organized our first blogging workshop. The goal of the workshop was to give researchers that want to get started with blogging – or translating their research for a bigger audience – a kickstart. At the end of the workshop, all participants were able to formulate the main message of their blog, which they can use to start writing. To give an idea of the experiences of the participants, we made a collage from parts of their evaluations:

As a community, we learned a lot while organizing the workshop and from the feedback. This has resulted in us organizing a follow-up meeting on Wednesday morning September 13^th, which will be even more interactive. During this meeting, we will help participants to prepare their drafted blog for publication. Besides, we plan to organize an English blogging workshop at the start of 2024 to reach a broader audience.

Networking lunch (June 27th 2023)

After the workshop, we organized a networking lunch. In three rounds, researchers from different fields could meet each other. In between the rounds, researchers could address the whole room during short pitches. The researchers handed out several ‘business cards’ to stay in touch with their new contacts.

The networking lunches will continue during the new academic year, linked to different themes. In this way, researchers can stay in touch, acquire new contacts and stay up to date on all activities of the Dynamics of Youth Early Childhood community.

Introductions in departments

The Dynamics of Youth communities gain an increasing number of contacts in different faculty departments. For example, recently we celebrated our first year as DoY communities by delivering cake to each faculty department that is acquainted to DoY.

Besides, we regularly join department meetings to introduce ourselves and explain what the DoY communities can mean for your department. For example, we introduced the Early Childhood community to researchers of the Institute of Language sciences and to researchers in the Wilhelmine Children’s Hospital. If you would like us to join your department meeting, you can email us at: early.childhood@uu.nl.

Funding possibilities

As a community, we are allowed to financially support researchers as we see fit. Therefore, we have extended a call. You can apply for grants in four categories for a great variety of goals, including but not limited to: an expansion of your current research, a new collaboration, an event, a public engagement activity, using (FAIR) data or FAIRifying data.

You can find the call here.

Student assistant needed

From September 1^st onwards, we are looking for a new student assistant. Click here to read more. You can send your application (CV and motivation letter) to early.childhood@uu.nl. 

Agenda

In the new academic year, we are planning to organize the following activities:

• Every two months           Networklunch for EC community members
• 28 August 2023                Booster borrel DoY
• 13 September 2023        Follow-up of blogging workshop; from draft to publication
• 12 October 2023             FAIR data fair
• 21 March 2024                 Visit of DoY communities to ILS colloquium
• Summer 2024                   Summer school ‘Early Chidhood’