Celebrating research student public engagement successes

Birkbeck Public Engagement Awards

Monday 19 March 2018

On 19 March Birkbeck celebrated the public engagement successes of researchers at an inaugural award ceremony. The event showcased research which has been successfully communicated to a wider audience and among the 25 projects considered the following awards for PhD/ Early Career entries were recognized. Awards in this category were made for inspiring public engagement work undertaken by researchers in the early stages of their research career.

Winner: Tottenham’s Trojan Horse? Stadium-led regeneration in North London

Dr Mark Panton (School of Business, Economics and Informatics)

Dr Mark Panton recently received his PhD for his thesis entitled ‘How do Stakeholders Influence Stadium-led Regeneration? The Story from East Manchester and Tottenham.’ Dr Panton’s research focused on understanding local communities’ and stakeholders’ perspectives on stadium-led regeneration. Through the research, Dr Panton was privy
to the stories of real people, those in danger of losing their homes, their livelihoods and their connections in their community due to regeneration. Now members of the community have helped to shape a graphic
book telling their stories, amongst the complex ideas and relationships involved in large-scale redevelopment.

Highly Commended: Recovering women in the digital age: editing the long nineteenth century

Flore Janssen (PhD Candidate, Department of English and Humanities), Alexis Wolf (PhD Candidate, School of Arts) and Beatrice Bazell (School of Arts).

Flore has worked with co-founders Alexis Wolf and Beatrice Bazell to run a series of Wikipedia editing workshops designed to support new Wikipedia contributors – both academic researchers and members of the public – in
producing well-researched pages on forgotten women of the long nineteenth century. The team has been supported in their efforts by partners from the Pre-Raphaelite Society and Wikimedia UK.

History Acts

Guy Beckett (PhD Candidate, Department of History, Classics and Archaeology) and Dr Steffan Blayney (Research Assistant, University of Sussex).

Guy Beckett is a PhD candidate in History who runs History
Acts, a radical history forum that explores the links between history
and activism. Guy works with Dr Steffan Blayney, a research assistant at the University of Sussex, to run monthly workshops that bring together
activists organising in an area of contemporary political relevance
with historians working on a related topic. The forum is based
at the University of London, with support from partners, the
Raphael Samuel History Centre and History Workshop Online.

AHRC-funded PhD studentship

AHRC-funded PhD studentship: Confronting a masculine military ideal: the experiences of LGBTQ service personnel 1914–now

This AHRC PhD Studentship is in Collaboration with Imperial War Museums (IWM) under the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership programme. The partner institutions are Birkbeck and the IWM.

The studentship will be supervised by Professor Matt Cook at Birkbeck and Rebecca Newell of IWM. This full-time studentship, which is funded for three years at standard AHRC rates, will begin on 1 October 2018.

Using material from across the IWM’s collection, including the sound collection, and with a particular focus on the museum’s private papers and oral history archives, this project will examine narratives of LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer/Questioning) experience in the military for all or part of the period from 1914 to the present day.

Subject to AHRC eligibility criteria, the scholarships cover tuition fees and a grant (stipend) towards living expenses.

Deadline to apply: 8 July 2018

Further details, including how to apply, are available here.

#vitaehangout: Making the most of PhD placements

Tuesday 20 March at 12-1pm

Preparations are underway for a #vitaehangout ‘Making the most of PhD placements‘ which takes place on Tuesday 20 March at 12-1pm GMT.

The panel represents different perspectives ranging from those who have undertaken a placement to an institutional and funders view.

Panellists

Steve Colburn, Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts South-East England (CHASE)
Ysabel Gerrard, University of Sheffield – placement at Microsoft
Rob Hardwick, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
Rob Keegan, South West Doctoral Training Partnership (SWDTP)
Sarah Middle, Open University/CHASE – placement at the British Library

How to take part

The informative lunch hour will be a useful and effective investment of time. It’s very easy to take part, just register your interest and you will be emailed a live YouTube link nearer the time in readiness for the event. Questions can be posted before or during the event for the panel to answer.