Manchester Research Software Community are excited to announce their next meeting for the Manchester research community. They are joined by special guest Dr Mike Simpson, an SSI fellow and an RSE based at the University of Newcastle.
Let's Talk About Mental Health
Mike has been talking about mental health in the research software community as part of his fellowship with the Software Sustainability Institute. In this talk, Mike will share his story and talk about what he has learned from giving the talk at a dozen different institutions and from attending various other events over the last year. There will also be an opportunity for some discussion, Q&A and interactive data collection.
Note: For anyone who saw the talk at RSECon25, the beginning is the same, but the rest has changed, with new info, conclusions, tips and other content.
Bio: Mike has officially been a Research Software Engineer since 2018, though he has been working in the area for over a decade. He previously worked in the games industry, earned a PhD and worked as an RA, before becoming a founding member of the Newcastle RSE Team. He is also Trustee and Vice President of the Society of RSE and a 2025 SSI Fellow.
Supplementary Info: One of the main outputs from Mike's fellowship is the ConveRSE project. ConveRSE aims to continue the conversation around mental health in the RSE/dRTP community. The ConveRSE website is intended to be a hub for mental health information, resources, blog posts and more. Mike is interested in collecting resources, stories and tips for the site, so please check it out, use the forms to submit content, or contribute to the site via its GitHub page.
The meeting will be held in a hybrid format. We will have a discussion session after the planned talk. The details are as follows:
- Date: 20th March 2026, Friday
- Time: 10:30 AM to 12 PM GMT
- Venue: Uni Place_2.220 / Online, Teams
- AccessAble Guide for the venue.