Your safety during travel, conferences, and fieldwork

Read our advice on staying safe when travelling for university business, attending conferences or doing fieldwork:

Organising your travel or fieldwork

Check the Wellbeing, Safety and Health fieldwork pages for guidance on risk assessment processes for travelling and working away from the University during your studies (for example, travelling for study and research-related activities such as conferences, meetings, or other fieldwork or data collection). Their guidance will tell you the types of activities covered by the risk assessment process and what you need to do.

Make sure you use the risk assessment processes in place in your school or faculty. Your Graduate School can put you in touch with the relevant Health and Safety team if you have any questions.

Read guidance on travel and insurance.

Choosing a conference to attend

Discuss with your supervisory team before booking to attend or present at a conference. They will be able to suggest conferences that are useful in your discipline, consider any impact on your project (for example, dates before a report submission deadline) and whether any external funding or grants are available.

Be aware that not all conferences are high quality, and some may even be scams. Warning signs to look out for include generic names, very high fees and generic websites with poor design. If you are unsure, check with your supervisor before any bookings. Read more advice on avoiding scams.

Staying safe when away from the University

If you are travelling to meetings, conferences or organising fieldwork, you must complete a ‘Change of study location’ in GRAD.

You should continue to have supervision meetings during any period of fieldwork or travel and ensure you meet the University’s minimum supervision requirements.

If you are undertaking fieldwork without a member of your supervisory team present, supervisory meetings can be held online, by or phone. In exceptional circumstances, where live two-way communications are not possible due to remote locations, text-based methods such as email may be used to provide supervision for short periods of time.

All supervisory meetings should be written up in GRAD as soon as possible after they are held.

You should also read the Travelling for University business during global crises page on the staff intranet (log in required). Even if your destination seems safe at the time of planning, it’s important to consider how your plans may be impacted if the situation changes.

Training to support safe travel

OD&PL offers two workshops designed to help you to identify and manage potential hazards while travelling:

• ‘Essentials’ covers foundational safety and security practices and is relevant to all those who travel as part of their role.
• ‘Advanced’ covers everything in the Essentials module, as well as additional guidance covering travel to higher risk destinations overseas. The Advanced module includes content from the Essentials module, so you do not need to attend both.

For more details and how to book, visit the Staying safe and secure while travelling for work page on the staff intranet (log in required).

Harassment and misconduct during conferences or fieldwork

Fieldwork and conferences are often an important part of research and should be safe, beneficial and enjoyable. However, it is important to be aware of your personal safety and know what to do if something happens. 

All postgraduate researchers must complete our ‘Preventing and addressing harassment and misconduct’ module on Minerva.

The module will give you the knowledge and skills to recognise, prevent, and respond to harassment, sexual misconduct, and related forms of harm within our university community.

If you have experienced or witnessed of any kind of violence, abuse, bullying, harassment, sexual misconduct or discrimination, you can tell the Harassment and Misconduct team through a disclosure form on our Report and Support website. You can share what has happened anonymously or provide your contact details.

You can also contact your Graduate School, DPGRS, or the Student Counselling and Wellbeing service for support.

Using the SafeZone app

We recommend that you download the University’s SafeZone app before going away. The emergency and first aid functions will route users to the local emergency services, no matter where in the world you are.

The blue ‘non-urgent’ button allows you to either call or opens a chat window with University Security. This means that wherever you are in the world you can get advice from the Security team.

Whilst there are limits to what Security are able to do on your behalf (they can’t rearrange flights or accommodation), they can activate your school emergency contact cascade to alert your team to your situation.

SafeZone also offers a check-in timer which can be used globally. This allows an alert to be raised if you do not respond within a set time period. This must be investigated before being used for your safety (check you know how to use it) but may be useful for higher risk local transportation or sea trips where marine safety is not safe as in the UK.

Research fieldwork culture and inclusivity

To ensure a positive fieldwork experience for everyone, it’s essential to plan fieldwork activities that are safe, equitable and inclusive.

Fieldwork may take place in diverse countries and environments, so be mindful of local customs, traditions and cultural differences. Always show respect for fellow participants, staff and students from varied backgrounds, as well as local residents, communities and cultural heritage. Read the Foreign Office’s country‑specific advice.

The Faculty of Environment and the Centre for the Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes Volcanoes and Tectonics (COMET) has produced Guidelines for Safe, Inclusive and Equitable Research Fieldwork. These resources cover topics such as creating a positive team culture and addressing practical needs like toileting and menstruation.

The PRIDE guidelines are also available to help make fieldwork safer and more inclusive for LGBTQ+ researchers. All PGRs and supervisors are strongly encouraged to review these materials before undertaking fieldwork.