UKCGE Welcomes New Team Member for ‘Value of the Doctorate’ Campaign
In summer 2026, UKCGE welcomed volunteer Charlotte Skye – a doctoral candidate at the University of Birmingham – who will be working on a new campaign focussed on the value of doctoral study. Her placement is funded by Midlands4Cities.
Charlotte Skye joined the team during the 2026 Annual Conference in Liverpool and is currently studying for a PhD in Philosophy of Psychiatry, with a specific interest in how mental disorders are classified in psychiatric manuals. She enjoys the applied nature of the topic, along with the complexities of defining culture. She hopes that her work can prevent certain beliefs from being inappropriately pathologized in the future.
With relation to her work for UKCGE, Charlotte will be contributing to a brand-new campaign on the Value of the Doctorate.
“I’m very interested in access to education,” she explains, “When the idea of a placement came up, I expressed an interest with my funding body, Midlands4Cities, and they signposted me towards UKCGE. The work you do as a charity aligns with my interests, and it has given me the opportunity to have more input now rather than waiting for years to complete my studies.
“Doing a placement was something that I always thought would be quite good for me – just to meet new people and experience something different. It’s been quite a collaborative endeavour so far. [We have been] generating ideas between us that align with my interests around class and access to Higher Education and seeing which outputs will be most useful to people.”
At the time of writing, Charlotte has embarked on an analysis of HESA data to compare doctoral topics with the sorts of careers which graduates then go into. “What’s already interesting is that there are quite a few gaps and limitations within the data specifically regarding doctorates, so I have been able to identify areas where more research might be useful,” she said.