King's Doctoral Students' Association

The King’s Doctoral Students’ Association (KDSA) is the recognised representative body of the Postgraduate Research (PGR) student community within King's Student Union (KCLSU). As an academic association, we have representatives across all nine faculties and five campuses. All doctoral students at King’s are automatically part of KDSA.

Aims

KDSA works closely with the university's Senior Management to improve PGR experience through:

• Ensuring effective representation of part-time and full-time PhD students by:
  • upholding, extending, and defending the rights of all PhD students at King’s
  • addressing student concerns such as funding issues, work-life imbalance or lack of support which can undermine PGR student experience, teaching conditions and research output
  • enabling collaboration and exchange of good practices among faculty and department representatives
• Fostering equality, diversity, and inclusion in research by:
  • creating and sustaining peer support networks for academic and non-academic topics
  • improving and raising awareness of specialist support and resources available to different groups of PhD students
• Improving representation and working conditions of Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) and Graduate Research Assistants (GRAs) 
• Organising and supporting PhD activities, such as:
  • social events to strengthen the PhD community and connect students at King’s
  • career events to build professional skills and strategic networks
  • academic events to showcase research and facilitate academic collaboration
• Refining and raising awareness of resources available to PhD students.
• Promoting sustainable research by encouraging bottom-up initiatives

KDSA has a seat in the following College committees:

• College Research Committee (CRC)
• College Education Committee (CEC)
• Post-graduate Students Research Sub-Committee (PRSS)
• PGR One Team
• Studentships and Fees Oversight Committee

Some of our members can also self-nominate through the KCLSU to sit on the College Academic Board on a rotational basis. We currently have PGR representation through our FoLSM and IoPPN Reps on the Academic Board.

Current campaigns:

Support our campaigns to improve your PhD student experience!

• Facilitate Good Supervision campaign
• Relaxing IP Regulations campaign
• Fair Pay and working conditions for GTAs and GRAs campaign

Our Committee's strategic priorities this year are:

• PGR Workload - focussed on improving PGR research culture and workload issues amongst health and science faculties 
• Good Supervision Practice - focussed on improving and refining the Student-Supervisor Agreement and informal feedback raising mechanisms across all faculties
• PGR Community - focussed on fostering a sense of belonging and community for PGRs across King's 

Current events:

Find all our events on Eventbrite! 

KDSA Board for 2023-24:

Executive board:

• President/Chair: Anna Tan
• Vice President/Vice Chair & Treasurer: Miki Uchima
• Secretary: Navsheen Kaur

Extended executive board:

• Public Relations Coordinator: Jung-Hsin Hsieh
• Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Lead: Florian Hansen
• Wellbeing Lead: Oluebube Nwajiaku

Representative for:

• International Students: Rania Lachouri
• Healthcare Professionals: Caroline da Cunha Lewin
• Graduate Teaching Assistants & Graduate Research Assistants: Damon Cleaver

Campus Representatives:

• St Thomas's campus: Ajda Pristavec
• Guy's Campus: Arturo Monzon
• Denmark Hill Campus: Miryam Schattner

Faculty Representatives:

• Faculty of Arts & Humanities (A&H): David Williams
• Faculty of Social Sciences and Public Policy (SSPP): Iris Magne
• Faculty of Life Science & Medicine (FoLSM): Fabio Grundland Freile 
• Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN): Emil Galanides
• Faculty of Dentistry and Craniofacial Sciences (FoDOCS): Elle Hill
• King's Business School (KBI): Huiyu (Heather) Wu 
• Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care (NMPC): Ling Wang
• Francis Crick Institute: Shan Ding

If you have questions or feedback regarding our work or ideas for future activities please get in touch with [email protected]. We are looking forward to hearing from you!

Vacant Committee Positions for 2023-24 Board:

• Representative for Natural, Mathematical & Engineering Sciences (NMES)
• Representative of the Dickson Poon School of Law
• Representative for Strand Campus
• Representative for Part-Time PGRs

If you are interested in applying for our current vacancies, please contact us at [email protected].  

KDSA's achievements in the past years

KDSA campaigned to improve the PhD student experience and brought:

• Fair Pay For GTAs (in line with national inflation rate)
• Thesis Writing Space to King's
• Lockers for PGR Students

As well as

• Delivered academic training such as public-speaking training or Scopus and Mendeley workshops
• Contributed to linking PhDs with industry through co-organising Promega events.
• Organised focus groups to improve part-time PGR student experience at King’s.  
• Circulated useful content for PGRs through our social media platforms. 
• Created environmental awareness by promoting metal straws and reusable water bottles on KCL campuses.

Furthermore, KDSA-supported events such as

• Women in Science: Debate on how to fight gender inequality where female academics talk about their careers, focusing on the challenges facing women in research and how they have overcome them.
• Black in Academia: To raise awareness around people of colour and create a strong community of young black researchers at King's