ENTRIES ARE INVITED FOR THE 17th ANNUAL MAVIS BATEY ESSAY PRIZE Closing date for submissions 2nd Oct 2022
Our annual essay competition is intended to encourage vibrant, scholarly writing and new research, especially by those who have not yet had their work published. It is open to any student, worldwide, registered in a bona-fide university or institute of higher education, or who has recently graduated from such an institution. Submissions must be 5,000 to 6,000 words and the only restriction on subject matter is that it must be of relevance to some aspect of garden history which could include explorations of little known gardens, or an aspect of botany, ecology, horticulture, archaeology, social history, architecture, design, art history or sculpture.
The prize includes an award of £500, free membership of The Gardens Trust for a year and consideration for publication in our peer-reviewed, scholarly journal Garden History. All previous winners have been accepted for publication, and often the best of the non-winning entries are invited to submit to the journal as well.
Submissions or any further enquiries should be sent to essayprize@thegardenstrust.org by 6pm Sunday 2nd October 2022 For further details and entry forms see :http://thegardenstrust.org/research/prize/
12th New Research Symposium Saturday 26th November 2022– Call for papers
The New Research Symposium is an important feature of the Gardens Trust’s programme. It is open to all researchers and scholars, regardless of whether or not they are attached to an academic institution. Launched in 2011, the eleven previous symposia have hosted papers from fifty researchers. Many of these are members of County Gardens Trusts and a third are scholars from overseas, all of whom we warmly welcome.
Researchers in all fields of activity are encouraged to submit a 200-word proposal for a paper whose subject is as yet unpublished. Any topic relating to Garden History will be considered, for example: explorations of little known gardens, or aspects of botany, ecology, horticulture, archaeology, social history, architecture, design, art history and sculpture. The paper will be no longer than 20 minutes (approximately 2,000 to 2,500 words) and illustrated with a PowerPoint (or similar) slide presentation. The symposium will be held on-line via zoom. We’d be happy to answer any questions and even happier to receive proposals via newresearchsymposium@thegardenstrust.org closing date 6 pm, Sunday, 2nd October 2022
By Kim Caris-Roberts Flow n Flux “BIG BROTHER HOUSE, THIS IS DAVINA, YOU ARE LIVE ON CHANNEL 4, PLEASE DO NOT SWEAR!” This month there really was only one place to begin. Each and every one of us at Flow n Flux wanted to acknowledge how scary the world seems right now, in the wake of the war in the Ukraine; watching war unfold can make us feel powerless and the range of emotions can be complex. We needed to acknowledge that. Were there any ‘right words’ for the current climate? We concluded not. We expressed and shared our concerns and we are thankful we have a safe space to do this.
We then began to explore March’s theme: Reality TV. Big Brother seemed to have been the most common first experience of the genre, mentioned a number of times in our individual offerings from the free-writing activity, which enabled interesting free association using 9 words to gently guide us in our flow. “It’s always been my guilty pleasure”, a statement many of us identified with. Why guilty? We discussed the topics of ‘contestant’ exploitation, whether the burgeoning genre which shows no signs of slowing offers opportunities once unheard of to generations, we questioned does Reality TV alleviate any need for talent?, what constitutes reality TV? Perhaps one unexpected answer: Football.
Referring to The White Pube Podcast: The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, we continued to explore our oft’ complicated relationship with this genre of TV. After much discussion one member proudly proclaimed “I am dropping my shame around Reality TV: I love it!”.
Our last task was to create a Dragon’s Den-esque pitch for a new Reality TV show which embedded Feminist thought…Cue one group who pitched a plethora of misogyny offenders fighting it out for the opportunity to repent for their harms to cries of “In the pit! In the Pit!” that will forever echo in my ears every time I watch The Hunger Games.
For April we consider the questions of difference which have been central to the way that the feminist movement articulates itself. Specifically, we will explore difference among women, in particular, along the lines of race, class and sexuality, as well as national and geopolitical location. We will consider feminism, using Black feminism as our centre, in order to look critically at the current cultural landscape.
Little Extras April 1st-31st- Autism Awareness Month April 1st-31st Stress Awareness Month April 7th – World Health Day April 25th-29th National Stalking Awareness Week April 25th-1st May Lesbian Visibility Week
If you want to join FnF mailing list, please email: flownflux@gmail.com
The BGRS is pleased to announce the 2022 Birkbeck 3 Minute Thesis Competition, which will take place on Thursday 16 June from 6pm. Please mark this date in your diaries! This will be the first competition to have taken place in person since 2019.
Birkbeck 3MT: Thursday 16 June 2022
Join a selection of Birkbeck PhD students as they compete to communicate their compelling thesis topics in just three minutes. This event is a fantastic opportunity to share and celebrate the interests and successes of PhD researchers from across the College and we invite all current Birkbeck PhD students to take part. The winner of the Birkbeck competition will be chosen by an expert panel of judges who will award:
£500 to the overall winner
£250 to the runner up
The audience will also have their say by picking a people’s choice winner who’ll win a special prize.
Training Sessions
As part of our support for the competition, a free programme of training sessions has been arranged. All potential 3MT competitors should attend these sessions. However, any or all of them are open to any doctoral researcher at Birkbeck who would like to gain skills in these areas:
Following on from the success of the virtual Live Lectures in the previous IP for Research programmes, Vitae and the Intellectual property Office (IPO) will again be offering free online live lectures within the 2021/22 programme. See here for more
Applications for British Federation of Women Graduates Academic Awards are now being sought. The Awards are made to women doctoral students who will be in, or going into, their third year (or part time equivalent) of work for a research PhD/DPhil etc. in the autumn of 2022. Awards are, in effect, one off prizes varying in value from £1,000 to £6,000 and are given for outstanding academic excellence coupled with written and verbal communication skills. For further details please go to: www.bfwg.org.uk and look up under ‘Awards/Scholarships’ where more information, including criteria for eligibility, can be found.
Closing date for applications is: 5pm on Friday 4th March 2022
BRITISH FEDERATION OF WOMEN GRADUATES RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS DAY
Saturday 14th May 2022 10.30am – 4.00pm At BFWG HQ: 4 Mandeville Courtyard, 142 Battersea Park Road, London SW11 4NB
The RPD is when BFWG invites doctoral students to present their research to a general audience. Last year we were had to hold the Day as a ‘virtual’ event due to the pandemic. We hope that it will be possible to hold the Day in person this year and we invite postgraduate students to submit abstracts of their research for consideration. Abstract forms will be available on the BFWG website: www.bfwg.org.uk
Are you a postgraduate woman student? Do you have research you would like to present to a discerning audience – and have the chance of winning a small prize of £120 for the best presentation to a general audience? Or would you like to join with us, just to meet and listen to other postgraduate women students presenting their research? Our Research Presentations Day (RPD) offers these opportunities. Past attendees, both presenters and audience, have found the Day thoroughly enjoyable and helpful in developing presentation skills. If you think you would like to submit an abstract please look at BFWG webpages www.bfwg.org.uk or contact rpd@bfwg.org.uk for further details. Closing date for applications is: March 31st 2022 All -students, academics, anyone else interested (male or female) – are welcome to attend as audience. Lunch is included and there is a door charge of £10 but no charge for bona fide students whether attending as presenters or as audience.
We are so happy to announce our first annual Entangled
Exchanges workshop is open for registration!
Over the course of two weeks we are going to be exploring how we can decolonise
our teaching practices and spaces. We will look at questions such as:
How
can we as teachers create and hold spaces that celebrate difference?
How
can we respond to acts of violence in the classroom in a way that enables
students to return to that space, and keep coming back to the university in the
future?
How
can we make teaching spaces safer, and build in context and criticality for
Eurocentric canons and curricula?
We have an amazing line of speakers including Linda
Tuhiwai Smith, Nur Sobers Khan, Xine Yao, Consented Youth, Meleisa Ono-George,
June Rubis, Beatrice Okyere-Manu and Larissa Behrendt. Join us as we
collectively attempt to untangle the classroom and think through our place
within it.
This
workshop is for arts and humanities practice-based/led research PhD
students and recent graduates who want to explore their career ambitions in
academia and/or beyond.
New weekly podcast:
Corkscrew – Practice research beyond the PhD
Sophie
Hope interviews different generations of practice-based research PhD graduates
from different disciplines about why they did practice-based/led PhDs in the
first place and what they went on to do next. The podcast is produced with
assistance from Dr Jo Coleman.
Together with European project MINDtheGEPs and a distinguished panel from Portugal, the EU institutions and the research community, we will deep dive into Portugal’s performance on equality, discuss what more the EU could do to deliver a gender balanced research system and consider how the gender equality implementation plans will be rolled out in Europe’s research and innovation framework.
The discussion on Wednesday 16th June will be divided in two sessions; the first, starting at 10:00 CEST, will examine the reasons behind Portugal’s success and how it could be replicated across Europe, with questions to representatives from the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Portuguese Government and the research community. The second session, starting at 11:35 CEST, will bring together established members of the research community to discuss how gender equality can be realised in practice through strategic interventions and implementation of gender equality plans. The event brings together the following speakers:
Session 1 on policy, moderated by Elizabeth Crossick, Head of EU Government Relations, RELX: – Rosa Monteiro, Secretary of State for Citizenship & Equality, Portugal – Ramona Strugariu, Member of European Parliament, Renew Europe – Lesia Radelicki, Member of Cabinet of the Equality Commissioner, Helena Dalli – Prof Analia Torres, Director CIEG, Centre of Gender Studies, Lisbon University – Federica Rosetta, Vice President Academic & Research Relations EU, Elsevier
Session 2 on policy in practice, moderated by Claudio Colaiacomo, Vice President Academic Relations, Elsevier: – Mina Stareva, Head of Sector Gender, DG Research & Innovation, European Commission – Prof Maria Chiara Carrozza, President CNR (National Research Council, Italy) – Prof Stefano Geuna, Rector Magnificus, Torino University, Italy – Anna Wahl, Vice President Gender Equality & Values, KTH (Royal Institute of Technology)Time
Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image (BIMI) is currently
planning its programme of events for 2021-22. We welcome proposals from
researchers and students working in any discipline or field across the College.
We are very happy to work in collaboration with research centres and institutes
at Birkbeck or at other institutions, both in terms of exchanging ideas and
materials and in terms of sharing costs and logistics.
We encourage our Birkbeck colleagues to utilise the
facilities of Birkbeck Cinema to foreground new or rarely screened films and
other moving image works, and/or to contribute to contemporary debates around
academic research and its relationship to social, political and cultural
questions of the day.
In normal times, all of our events take place in Birkbeck
Cinema, typically on Friday evenings 6-9pm and Saturdays 10-5pm. Birkbeck
Cinema is an exceptional resource, now equipped to project the most up to date DCP
and other digital formats, as well as traditional formats such as 35mm and
16mm.
In the current circumstances, however, we cannot say for
sure when we will have full access to Birkbeck Cinema. For the autumn term,
we are therefore especially interested in proposals for events that could be
adapted, if necessary, to online presentation, with the possibility of streaming
films via our Screening Room. From January 2022, while we hope to be able to
operate from the Cinema in our usual fashion, we are aware that nothing is certain,
and so we will remain open to the possibility of adapting BIMI events to online
versions if this proves necessary.
If you would like to propose an idea for an event, please
complete this form and send it tobimi@bbk.ac.ukwith the subject heading “BIMI proposals 2021-22”.The
deadline for submission is Friday 25 June.
Michael Temple, Director, Birkbeck Institute for the Moving
Image, and Essay Film Festival; Matthew Barrington, BIMI Manager
Title of proposed event:
Names of proposers and department or School:
Description of event (no more than 250 words, please):
Screening material (including technical specifications if known):
Indicative budget (film materials, speakers, travel, etc. – BIMI can typically cover up to £200 per event):
Potential collaborators (from Birkbeck or other institutions):
Peer support, finding a place within academia, staying up to date with the latest research, communicating research to wider audiences and navigating life after PhD.Ema Talam andJon Fairburn outline five ways in which social media, and in particular Twitter, can make all the difference to PhD research at a time when regular academic life has been severely disrupted.
Doing a PhD is hard: lack of work-life balance, uncertainty about the future, diminishing satisfaction with the PhD programme over time, isolation, harassment and discrimination are all too common experiences. COVID-19 has only exacerbated these challenges.
Whilst by no means a panacea, at a time when undertaking a PhD is even more of a fragmented and disjointed experience, social media provides an important space for connection. We – a PhD student and an experienced researcher with over 25 years of experience in academia – put forward the five following reasons why PhD researchers at any stage of the process can benefit from engaging with academic social media and why it is more important now than before COVID-19 pandemic.
Peer Support
Let’s start with the peer support. With universities in lockdown and many PhD students working from home, the informal support that comes from working as part of a research community has diminished. Despite its sometimes hostile reputation, peer support is strongly present on Twitter. Readers new to academic Twitter might consider following general academic hashtags, such as #AcademicTwitter, #AcademicChatter and #AcademicMentalHealth, or specifically PhD centred discussions on #phdchat and #virtualnotviral. Whilst a hashtag is not a peer support network, in difficult times they provide pathways to resources and opportunities to meet likeminded people that can make all the difference.
You may even find your peer group is larger than you anticipated. The sudden shift to remote teaching and learning early last year, placed experienced professors and PhD researches running their first classes from all fields in the same position of learning to teach remotely for the first time. The hashtags above as well as being links to a wider research community have also been an invaluable resource for teaching tips and tricks, learning resources and even free training. Do not be afraid to ask questions related to teaching or any aspect of academic life.
Whilst a hashtag is not a peer support network, in difficult times they provide pathways to resources and opportunities to meet likeminded people that can make all the difference.
Finally, Twitter can also be used as a tool for co-ordinating and engaging with existing PhD communities, for instance through organising synchronous and a-synchronous events, such as remote writing retreats.
Navigating your academic discipline(s)
In a similar way hashtags can also be used to find academic communities, for economists #econtwitter is a good place to start as is RePEc’s list of economists on twitter. Learned societies and their social media accounts, e.g. in our fields the Royal Economic Society or Regional Studies Association, also provide useful points for finding the latest news from a particular discipline and often provide tailored advice for how certain disciplines approach social media.
For better or worse, social media is a surveillance network. By following academics whose work you are interested in, you can not only directly engage with them, but by simply following you can develop a sense of the research, networks and events they are interested in. These can help you orient your research towards academic communities and projects that may not be represented within your own institution.
While approaching people at conferences can be intimidating, it is almost impossible on Zoom events due to lack of time dedicated for informal networking or even any breaks at all
Social media can also be a source of inspiration for looking beyond your immediate discipline. The shift to digital as a result of the lockdown, has considerably lowered barriers to attending conferences and seminars. These events are regularly advertised via social media and are a great opportunity for you to attend new areas of research and expose yourself to new ideas and methods that can benefit your PhD.
While approaching people at conferences can be intimidating, it is almost impossible on Zoom events due to lack of time dedicated for informal networking or even any breaks at all. Fortunately, the back channel provided by social media, such as Twitter, can provide a means of keeping the conversation going. Look out for event hashtags, which can be used to preview your work, or just to signal your presence and highlight what you found interesting. Finally, in digital environments where genuine engagement can often be minimal, a considered question or engagement is invaluable and can even lead to future collaboration.
Keeping up to date with the latest research
Not all academic dialogue resides in published academic papers. Many academics post and discuss newly published papers on Twitter. Social media such as twitter, are also central to sharing non-standard research outputs like blogposts, infographics, or even datasets. As COVID-19 has demonstrated much influential research has circulated via social media in the form of preprints, long before final publication. These can all be very useful for PhD students to track new developments in their fields of study.
Communicating your research to wider audiences
COVID-19 has also demonstrated the importance of social media as part of the public sphere and having a profile has become increasingly important for making your work visible to important stakeholders, the media and the general public. Established organisations, such as NGOs, or even your university, are likely to have significant audiences on social media and present opportunities to share your research with non-academic audiences.
This could involve simply tagging potential interested stakeholders in posts or taking part in more structured engagements. Simply being on social media does not guarantee public engagement, but it is a platform that allows you to connect to potential research users, which can be invaluable at a time when social contact of any type is minimal.
Life after PhD
Institutions and academics often share information about the job openings on Twitter. Following academics in your field of study can ensure that you have information about new job openings. Twitter makes it easy for information about job openings to be shared – your network can either tag you in posts about job openings or send a direct message. By building your social networks around your research interests, you are more likely to find relevant information about job openings in the field(s) of interest, whether in or outside of the academia. Many government agencies, firms and universities also have their professional profiles on LinkedIn, where they share information about new job opportunities. Additionally, on LinkedIn, you can easily indicate your openness to work or share your CV should you wish to. Both platforms can be used to seek for advice regarding job applications and help write stronger applications.
PhD students (and their supervisors) are sometimes sceptical about the use of social media and the time that will be spent on social media. Engaging with academic social media does not have to involve huge time investments – it can involve only several minutes per day and directly depends on what you want to get out of it. We would argue the benefits of using academic social media far outweigh the costs.
Note: This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of the Impact of Social Science blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please review our Comments Policy if you have any concerns on posting a comment below.
Image Credit: Adapted from Jon Tyson, via Unsplash.
About the author
Ema Talam
Ema Talam is a final year PhD in Economics student at Staffordshire University. She is interested in the topics of firm-level productivity, innovation and exporting, as well as innovation policies. Follow Ema on Twitter on @ematalam.
Jon Fairburn
Jon Fairburn is Professor of Sustainable Development at Staffordshire University. He teaches on the MSc Digital Marketing Management amongst other courses. Follow him on Twitter @ProfJonFairburn.
