PhD Student Blog post: Personal Learnings from the ADR UK PhD Annual Gathering – Cassandra Bossman-Dampier

Please tell us about your PhD project.

My project seeks to evaluate the youth intervention that made financial education compulsory in the secondary school curriculum and how this has impacted youth employment and financial wellbeing. It would seek to answer how effective it has been especially for children from socially and economically disadvantaged children.

What are your key takeaways from the ADR UK PhD Annual Gathering 2025?

My key takeaways from the ADR UK PhD gathering was the unlimited benefits of Public engagement and the different ways in which collaboration can work to ensure that the end goal of impact is achieved.

Are there any speakers, session or presentation that particularly resonated with you? And why?

Professor Sinead Brophy’s session resonated with me as she affirmed how challenging the journey can be. She also emphasised on the need to make sure that our work counts and gave assurance of the possibilities of this. Alongside this, Rachel Allen and Annemarie Newbury’s presentation sparked new ideas of further research. Shayda Kashef’s session on public engagement also made me think of how to effectively use public engagement to enhance the impact of my research.

How has the event impacted your perspective on your research?

It has given me more resolve to explore all available opportunities to ensure that societal impact is achieved from this work.

Did the event inspire any new ideas for your current or future research? Can you please share with us your next steps for your research following the event?

Yes, it inspired new ideas which will now see me expanding the original demographic that I was focusing on with this project to now include an analysis of not only the socially disadvantaged but to also analyse the impact on girls using the same dataset.