PhD Studentship - No-one Talks about Death and Dying: Developing and Evaluating a Serious Game to Enable Voluntary, Community & Social Enterprises to Engage and Work with Communities About Advanced Illness

About this project

Delivering advice, support and care to people in the community with advanced illness is challenging for Voluntary, Community & Social Enterprises (VCSEs), even after years of experience working in the heart of their communities. To improve VCSEs’ engagement with communities about palliative care, this exciting doctoral research project will develop a role-playing ‘Serious Game’ game to support conversations, signposting, and forward-planning concerning advanced illness, dying and death. Serious Games have previously been shown to facilitate dialogue and explore different ways of achieving desired goals, reducing health inequalities by enabling excluded people and groups to participate. The second part of this research study, conducted in selected VCSEs within Humber and North Yorkshire Healthcare Partnership will use an approach called ‘Realist Evaluation’ to evaluate the impact of VCSEs delivering the ‘Serious Game’ in different communities, explore how context constrain/enable delivery, and identify modifiable aspects to retain effectiveness but increase wider adoption

For informal inquiries, please contact

Dr Mark Pearson, Email mark.pearson@hyms.ac.uk

About the research cluster/about the research environment

This PhD cluster comprises four cross-Faculty inter-linked PhD scholarships, to address health inequalities in advanced illness at regional, national, and international levels. In the United Kingdom, demographic changes mean the proportion of older people is growing fast, with a rapid increase in the number of people living with advanced illnesses, including long-term conditions, complex multi-morbidities, and frailty.

Funding

• The successful applicant will receive a fee waiver and a maintenance grant / stipend for three years (full-time) or five years (part-time), which covers the research period of the PhD. The fee waiver for 22/23 is £4,596 (Home fee) and the maintenance grant is £17,668 per annum. This rises each year in line with the UKRI’s recommended stipend allowance.

• If you need to move into a fourth year (full-time) or sixth year (part-time) to complete your thesis, please note that you will not receive a tuition fee waiver or maintenance grant during this period and you will be required to pay a continuation fee.

Submission of thesis

Submission of your final thesis is expected within three years and three months from the start of your PhD scholarship for full-time and within five years and six months if studying part-time.

Eligibility and entry requirements

Applicants should have a minimum 2:1 degree in a health, social care or social science-related subject. A taught MSc or Masters by Research (MRes) in a relevant subject would be an advantage.

International applicants

This opportunity comes with a Home fee waiver only, which will not cover the full International fee. You will therefore need to pay the difference between the Home fee and the International fee and will need to provide evidence that you have sufficient funds to cover this.

How to apply

Applications are via the University of Hull webpage

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