Siobháin O’Doherty Commemorative Lecture

Wednesday, February 28, 2018 - 16:00 to 17:00
Teaching Room, Department of Psychology, John Hume Building, Maynooth University
This lecture will be of interest to all academics who supervise postgraduate students, as well as postgraduate students themselves (including all SPHeRE scholars) and other researchers working in academia.

A Bake Sale will take place afterwards (to which all attendees are also invited) and all proceeds will go to Pieta House. Please come along and lend your support.
 

Research on occupational stress among academics indicates that it is alarmingly widespread and on the rise. However, the prevalence of mental health problems as shown in official university statistics, remains low. This study - based on a representative sample of PhD students in Flanders (N=3659) – set out to address the following questions. (1) How prevalent are mental health problems amongst PhD students? (2) How does this prevalence compare with other groups of highly educated people? (3) Is there a relationship between work organisation and organisational policy at universities, and the mental health problems of PhD students? The study findings are highly transportable to other national and regional contexts and we conclude with some key take home messages.
 
Dr Katia Levecque is Assistant Professor of Industrial Relations at the Department of Personnel Management, Work and Organisational Psychology, Ghent University. Her main interests are occupational mental health and well-being and work organisation and employment conditions. She is also Promotor of the Centre for Research and Development Monitoring (ECOOM), where she manages the UGhent Unit on HR in Research. Her most recent work includes a study of the work organization and mental health problems of PhD students in Flanders (Belgium). This was published in Research Policy in March 2017 and has attracted worldwide attention (see #2 position https://www.altmetric.com/top100/2017/).
Siobhain O’Doherty Commemorative Lecture
‘Work organisation and mental health problems in PhD students’