Early Childhood
Newsletter October 2023
Dear Early Childhood community members,
We hope you had a great vacation and a good start of the new academic year. To keep your spirits high we want to share some inspiring events (past and future) related to early childhood research.
Deadline funding application
DEADLINE for Large and XL funds: October 15th 2023
Hurry up to apply for the Large and XL funding opportunities before October 15th 2023 23:59 CET time.
You can obtain support for your research endeavors related to Early Childhood such as an expansion of your current research, a new collaboration you wish to undertake, a public engagement and more.
Click here to read about the criteria for applying.
SAVE THE DATE: FAIR data network lunch
Together with the Thriving & Healthy Youth community and Research Data Management Support, the Early Childhood community is organizing a network lunch for all researchers and research support staff that are interested in FAIR data. No matter how advanced you are in your FAIR data endeavors, we want to give you the opportunity to learn more, connect with like-minded researchers and ask any question you might have.
The network lunch will be held on Thursday October 19th from 11:30 until 13:30 in the Bucheliuszaal in the University Library (room 6.18, Heidelberglaan 3, Utrecht).
For more information, see our agenda.
If you want to participate, please fill out the registration form.
Blog workshop follow-up
On September 13th 2023 we organized a follow-up to the blog workshop in June. We were able to write on blogs during the morning and gave individual feedback to the bloggers. This resulted in two great blogs that will be published on the Early Years Blog website.
We are planning to organize an English ‘starting to blog’ workshop in January 2024. Furthermore, we will organize more ‘blog writing mornings’ where we can provide individual feedback and help scientists to get their blog published.
Testimonies from participants of the first blog workshop in June:
Merel Breedeveld:
During the blog workshop we received information about blogging from different perspectives. Using practical tips and assignments we were helped to get started with our own blogs. The next steps to actually publish your blog were already prepared by the organizers. This truly made me feel that I could get started with writing and publishing my blog after following the workshop.
Original testimonial in Dutch:
Tijdens de blogworkshop is er vanuit verschillende invalshoeken informatie gegeven over bloggen. Met meer praktische handvatten en opdrachten zijn we op weg geholpen met het starten aan onze eigen blogs. Verdere vervolgstappen zodat je jouw blog ook daadwerkelijk kan gaan publiceren, waren door de organisatoren al voorbereid. Zo heb je het gevoel dat je naar aanleiding van de workshop echt kan gaan beginnen met blogs schrijven en publiceren.
Elanie van Niekerk:
I found the blog workshop to be very useful. I particularly enjoyed the hands-on practice activities. It helped me to communicate my research in a manner that is easy to understand, but still highlights the importance of the research. I now realize that this is easier said than done! The workshop has inspired me to blog more about my work to ensure that my research is accessible and beneficial to non-academic audiences. I look forward to the next workshop in September.
Spotlight
Do you also want to nominate someone (or maybe yourself) for our newsletter spotlight, send your story to early.childhood@uu.nl.
Conference – Neonatal sleep symposium in Cambridge, Claire College (August 31st 2023– September 1st 2023)
During the 4th annual Neonatal Sleep Talks symposium a broad range of recent research on sleep in the newborn and early infancy stages of life was presented. Master student Chanel Sam was among the presenters. She did a 9-month internship about preterm sleep and brain development in the Wilhelmina Childrens Hospital, followed by a 6-month internship about neuroimmunology at the L’Université d’Aix-Marseille. During her talk she combined these two subjects and proposed a new research about the combinatorial effect of sleep deprivation and early inflammation on future cognitive and neuroimmunological outcomes.
Chanel Sam, neuroscience & cognition student: “It was very cool to have the opportunity to present my study proposal during a symposium in front of experts in the field, especially as a student finishing my master’s degree. Because I could combine the knowledge I acquired during both my internships it was a great way to close this chapter. While preparing my presentation, I discovered that my passion truly lies with the youngest patients in the hospital. After I finished my masters, I would love to continue to support this group in my work.”
Interdisciplinary initiative – Booster borrel (August 29th 2023)
At the end of August a large audience attended the booster borrel funding lottery. The Early Childhood community celebrates that two large grants were given to researchers in the field of early development:
- A grant of €25.000 was given to Anneloes van Baar (Education and Pedagogy), Corline Parmentier (Neonatology) and Anja Volk (Information and Computing Sciences). They will study how musical stimulation could help the development of young children at risk, for instance for children with perinatal asphyxia.
- A grant of €25.000 was given to Michael van der Kooij (Developmental Origins of Disease), Ronald Poppe (Information and Computing Sciences) and Joyce Endendijk (Education and Pedagogy). In their project, they will focus on early life stress (ELS) and the consequences for parent-child interaction.
Michael van der Kooij, assistant professor DDOD lab: “The event was a lot of fun. It was great to talk to so many different researchers, who you would not usually meet. I used the list of participants to see which possible collaboration partners would attend. I think this made it easy to develop a concrete idea. We look from a different perspective, but in the end the three of us were all very interested in parent-child interactions and the influence of stressful events on these interactions. With the grant we can explore this research area further from our different points of view, while sharing experiences and knowledge. Joyce Endendijk will study the influence of stress on social interactions in human data. I will do the same in animal data, using an animal model for Early Life Stress. I mainly want to see if additional parental care can reduce the impact of stress. Finally, Ronald Poppe will automize the analysis of social interactions between parent-animals and pups. This will help us to further specify the different behaviors during this vulnerable period.”
Societal partner – Health Hub Utrecht (October 31st 2023)
Last week, the Health Hub Utrecht has presented itself to the Dynamics of Youth communities. We received information about the coalitions in which different societal themes are organized and about the projects that each coalition is working on. The general goal of the Health Hub Utrecht is to bring together practitioners, professionals, policymakers, administrations, educators and researchers, designers and innovators, startups, and entrepreneurs to support and transform healthcare and wellbeing in the Utrecht region.
On October 31st, the Health Hub Utrecht will organize a matching event for UU researchers and societal partners to see if we can collaborate to existing projects or if we can develop new projects together. You can find more information about the matching event here.
Agenda
The following activities might be interesting for you in the coming months:
- 19 October 2023 Networklunch – FAIR data
- 31 October 2023 Matching event Health Hub Utrecht
- 30 Nov – 1 Dec 2023 MRI Course UMC Utrecht (link)
- 13 December 2023 Networklunch – Grant writing in a multidisciplinary team
- 21 March 2024 Visit of DoY communities to ILS colloquium
- 19-23 August 2024 Summer school ‘Early Chidhood’