A new writing workshop and mentoring programme is now open to early career researchers.

Publishing for Social Change is a four-day workshop in Chennai, India and is backed up by a 10-month structured mentoring programme. The programme is for early career researchers (ECRs) in India who work on issues in or related to social work and youth work. Priority will be given to researchers from the Scheduled Castes (SC) in India.

This workshop will celebrate and amplify the research of participants by supporting writing and publication in these important yet often marginalised fields, both in high impact international peer reviewed journals and in other high quality international publications such as practitioner publications and open online journals. It aims to provide ECRs with insider knowledge and strategies for publishing in quality peer reviewed journals, and to build capacity amongst Indian academics to develop existing and new networks and systems to support ECRs to publish their work.

The project is being organised through a partnership between The Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development and King’s College London. The partnership developed after Dr Lalitha Subramanian, co-investigator on the project, spent time as a Visiting Postdoctoral Research fellow in the School of Education, Communication and Society at King's in 2019. It draws together support from experienced academics in social work and youth work from India and across the globe including the UK, Hong Kong and Australia.

This writing workshop and mentoring programme are led by a multi-disciplinary and multi-national team of academics. This includes three academics from the School of Education, Communication and Society: Dr Aisha Hutchinson, Lecturer in Social Sciences, Dr Tania de St Croix, Lecturer in the Sociology of Youth and Childhood, and Dr Mili, Postdoctoral Fellow in Education.

Dr Aisha Hutchinson, principal investigator on the project, said, "I am particularly excited about working in partnership with the team at the Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development. They are committed to raising the voice, experience and value of academics from the Scheduled Castes in India. One of the core mandates of the social work profession is to champion equality and raise marginalised voices, leading by example, and I hope that this writing workshop contributes to that process."

Find more information on the writing workshops and mentoring programme and apply here.