Academy develops lecture series

Earlier this year, students at the ACRC Academy secured funding to establish their own lecture series.

The series saw a number of specialists across various disciplines, within the University of Edinburgh visit the students. The series will be followed by workshops with undergraduates, teasing out the experience.

Student Partnership Agreement (SPA) Funding is designed to allow meaningful collaboration between students and staff.

ACRC Academy student Elisa Cardamone, from the 2022 cohort, gives us an overview of the events:

I would say that the whole idea came from our desire and curiosity to create our own project as a new team! Back in October, when we first discussed applying to the SPA funding, we had just met and shared many questions about the meaning behind the ‘agile leadership’ agenda of the Academy. We also recognised that many of us were new in Edinburgh and did not have an established network within the university. So, we thought that a project on leadership would be the perfect opportunity to work together, come up with our own questions, explore people and the university outside of the Academy environment to then bring all of this back to class!

So far in the project we have met with Devi Sridhar (Personal Chair of Global Public Health), Colm Harmon (Vice Principal), Catherine Bovill (Professor of Student Engagement in Higher Education), and Linda Bauld (Chair of Public Health).

Each speaker shared their perspective on leadership while reflecting on how their personal experiences have shaped them to be the leader that they are today. Hence, we have heard and reflected on different approaches to leadership, which, however, all shared a value-based approach.

We have learnt about collaboration, conflict management, sharing responsibilities, and how authenticity shapes directionality and decision-making. We were particularly interested in the speakers’ experience with imposter syndrome, how to manage it, and how to openly talk about it.

Now that we are preparing the workshops for the undergraduate community, we are structuring them around these very topics as to continue reflecting on them in practice with younger students and invite them to join the conversation.

We will provide a further update following the workshops.