Birkbeck Graduate Research School (BGRS) invites you to enter a Postgraduate Research Student Poster Competition, which will be held on campus alongside the 3 Minute Thesis Competition on Thursday 25 May from 6pm.
This Poster Competition is open to all doctoral researchers at Birkbeck and provides an excellent opportunity for you to present your research, practice your communication skills, to network with other doctoral researchers and to celebrate your work.
Prizes
The winner of the first prize will receive £150 and a certificate
Two runners up will be awarded certificates and £75 each
Poster requirements
You should create a research poster that explains complex research to a mixed audience of non-subject specialists.
Your poster should be formatted for printing as A0 in size and in portrait orientation.
What is involved?
Your poster will be displayed on a poster board, with an in-person judging session during a reception after the 3 Minute Thesis Competition.
You will be invited to attend your poster during the judging session and so that attendees can speak with you about your research.
In order to be printed (we will pay for your entry to be printed) you will need to send your completed poster as a .pdf to graduateresearchschool@bbk.ac.uk no later than midday Monday 22 May.
Training available
For all those taking part in the competition we are organising a workshop to help you produce your poster.
Regardless of whether you are planning to enter the 3 Minute Thesis Competition or enter this BGRS Poster Competition please do mark 6pm Thursday 25 May in your diaries for these exciting events.
The BGRS is pleased to announce the 2023 Birkbeck 3 Minute Thesis Competition, which will take place on Thursday 25 May from 6pm. Please mark this date in your diaries!
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:
Session 1: An introduction to 3MT and how to present a lightning talk – Thursday 11 May 3-4pm
Some of last year’s contenders have kindly shared what they gained from partaking.
Marie Houghton said that it ‘helped me to clarify exactly what I think the main message of my PhD is’ and that she ‘would definitely recommend taking part in the 3MT to any other PhD students.’
Hannah Reeves also said that the competition allowed her to ‘think about what matters most about my research – what do I care about, what do the community I’m working with care about, and what will this audience care about.’ She also described herself as nervous about the experience of being on stage but ‘the training helped to develop a mutually supportive atmosphere.’
Doyin Olorunfemi described how ‘the exercise of delivering a concise speech gives you clarity of mind as a researcher and clarifies your contribution.’ She would ‘highly recommend the competition.’
You can be part of the audience for this year’s Three Minute Thesis Competition. On Thursday 16 June, an expert panel of judges will decide which Birkbeck student has presented the most compelling, convincing, and concise summary of their thesis. There’s a lot at stake: not only the prestige of winning and the confidence that goes with it, but also –
£500 to the overall winner
£250 to the runner-up
As part of the audience you will have a vote to decide who is the People’s Choice. You can also join the Birkbeck postgraduate community in celebrating the diversity of research interests undertaken here, and raise a glass to that with a drinks reception after the winners have been announced.
As a result of the current situation we have had to postpone the BGRS Conference which will no longer take place on 22-23 April. However, we do intend to find an alternative date for the event later in the year and will confirm this once available.
I would like to take the opportunity to thank all who had helped to shape the conference through contributions by email, discussion off line, by attending any of the BGRS conference meetings, or by volunteering to take part in the student sessions on methods/ disciplines or the poster competition. Many thanks too to speakers who had agreed to take part.
Thanks in particular to those of you who have been active in the conference steering group and who had until recently been choosing and inviting speakers and helping to set things in place. I’m hopeful that we will be able to build on the work done so far and deliver an exciting event later in the year.
The following events and opportunities are available via the AHRC funded CHASE Doctoral Training Programme. All of the opportunities below are open to all Arts and Humanities PhD students at Birkbeck, regardless of whether they are funded or self-funded.
Future Pathways in Medieval and Early Modern Studies:
Academia and Beyond
Friday, 6 March and Friday 27 March
The aim of these two workshops is to explore the possible
pathways that medieval and early modern studies can open up for future careers.
Both workshops will host a group of speakers with PhDs in various aspects of
medieval and early modern studies that have since pursued a wide array of
careers. Their personal knowledge and experiences will provide the springboard
for informal roundtable discussions and exercises. These events will encourage
current postgraduate students to reflect critically on the ways in which one
can communicate and curate research and teaching expertise, while they will
also offer opportunities for new connections to be made with a variety of
individuals, institutions and sectors.
FRAMES – Friday 20 March The annual TRANSITIONS symposium has been extended with FRAMES,
a day of workshops for CHASE researchers. The workshops are Graphic Medicine
with Ian Williams and Comics as Research Practice with Nick Sousanis.
The workshops are focussed on comics and arts as part of the
research process, but are open to all research students affiliated with CHASE
institutions.
The day is divided into two workshop sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The morning session is Graphic Medicine with Ian Williams. The afternoon session is Comics as Research Practice with Nick Sousanis.
Transitions: New Directions in Comics
Studies is an annual one-day symposium promoting new research and
multi-disciplinary academic study of comics / comix / bande dessinée /
manga / and other forms of sequential art. The Transitions symposia have been a
fixture on the UK comics scholarship landscape, with a focus on new voices and
novel approaches in comics research. The programme emphasises a range of
approaches in research, and especially invites participation from research
students and early career researchers.
Critical Race Studies and the Premodern: Archive and Seminar
8 & 9 June | University
of Sussex
Decolonising the Curriculum (Practical Funded by the CHASE
Consortium, the Universities of East Anglia and Sussex are hosting two
postgraduate training workshops on critical race studies and the pre-modern.
This, the second of two events, will be held at The University of Sussex, 8-9
June 2020, and will focus on research. The event is designed to develop
students’ professional skills. We invite expressions of interest from all postgraduates
working in the Humanities (giving papers, designing and chairing sessions,
attending).
This interactive session will include discussion and opportunities for questions. It will cover all the basics of Research Data Management including:
why thinking about data management is a good idea
what the risks are
why planning for the long term helps
what you can do about any issues or requirements that you identify
This event will be useful for any students embarking on research, or established academics looking to improve their understanding of how to manage their data.
Researching LGBTQ+ Communities: openness, ethics and consent
What ethical implications do researchers working with LGBTQ+ communities need to consider? How do we navigate tensions in the drive to make data open? How do we manage consent in this context?
Birkbeck academics Dr Fiona Tasker (Reader in Psychology) and Ralph Day (doctoral researcher in contemporary history) will discuss their research, and how they work with their potentially sensitive data.
Fiona has published extensively on topics including family relationships, identity development of adults and children, and children’s social and emotional development in both non-traditional and new family forms and LGBTQ parenting.
Ralph’s current research focuses on queer sexualities and the telephone in Britain from the 1970s to the 1990s through a study of the telephone information and support service London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard.
This event is being organised as part of Love Data Week and as part of the Library’s LGBT+ History Month programme.
Data Management Plans for Postgraduate Research Students
This session is aimed at postgraduate research students and Master’s research students, who are creating or reusing data, or who may require ethical approval, and would like to create a Data Management Plans (DMPs) to help guide them through their project.
DMPs are also important documents for funded research, with many funders requiring them as part of a bid. Being familiar with the process of creating DMPs is therefore a useful research skill. We will use example plans and online tools to create DMPs, and look at how to improve them.
The following events and opportunities are available via the AHRC funded CHASE Doctoral Training Programme. All of the opportunities below are open to all Arts and Humanities PhD students at Birkbeck, regardless of whether they are funded or self-funded. If I could also draw your attention to a couple of calls for papers/participation that are currently open.
Journal recruiting members for next Editorial Board
Brief Encounters is currently recruiting the next Editorial Board to oversee the creation of issue 5 – see below press release:
Seaside, Ruin and De-Industrialisation on the Cleveland Coast
Friday 10th to sunday 12th of January
Redcar/Cleveland
Following the critical excursion Beyond the Heartlands and building on themes of de-industrialisation, landscape and ruin, the ‘Space Place Time’ research collective are calling for participants for a two-day critical excursion to Redcar and Cleveland. Completed in 1846, the Middlesbrough and Redcar Railway hoped to attract tourism, but like much of the region, Redcar’s expansion came with the 1850 discovery of iron ore in the Eston area of the Cleveland Hills. The engine of Britain’s Industrial Revolution, Redcar was simultaneously home to a Victorian pleasure pier. The pier’s demolition in 1981 can be seen as an allegory of the decade’s slum, which saw the simultaneous decline of both industries.
The Frankfurt Exotic: broken objects and porous walls in Naples
Beginning of April (deadline to apply 15 Jan)
Naples, Italy
Following the critical excursion Re-mapping the Arcades
Project in Glasgow, and building on the field engagement with the work and
cities of Walter Benjamin, we are calling for participants in a critical
excursion in Naples: The Frankfurt Exotic: broken objects and porous walls in
Naples. This critical excursion will take place over 4 nights at the beginning
of April 2020 and will involve a series of workshops, walking tours and
screenings with the anticipated outcome of a publication recording
conversations, presentations, works in progress, creative responses and
translation work.
Friday 17th of January (from 12:00) – Norfolk Heritage Centre
Saturday 18th January – Blickling Estate
The second of the CHASE DTP-funded Bookscapes workshops, offering PhD students advanced training in palaeographical, codicological and bibliographical skills, will take place on 17th-18th January 2020, hosted by the University of East Anglia and led by Tom Roebuck and Sophie Butler. At the Norfolk Heritage Centre, on day one of the workshop, attending students will have the opportunity to engage with the collections of the original Norwich City Library (founded in 1618). The workshop will move to Blickling Estate on the second day, where the students will focus on the techniques and history of bookbinding and the history of the book. The second day’s workshop will be led by Nicholas Pickwoad, one of the leading experts on bookbinding and an adviser to the National Trust on book conservation.
Numbers for the workshops are strictly limited. We encourage all interested PhD students to contact bookscapes@kent.ac.uk as soon as possible. You can also follow us on twitter at https://twitter.com/bookscapes.
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CHASE Essentials – Thesis Boot Camp
Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd of February
University of Sussex
Are you a mid- or late-stage doctoral researcher, struggling
to make progress with your thesis? Do you keep putting off your writing? If so,
Thesis Boot Camp could be the solution. Deadline to apply – 17 January.
Aural Diversity is a series of lectures, workshops and in-situ training sessions seeking to encourage creative and critical attention towards aural diversity within the arts and humanities, with particular focus on an ecology of the ear, designed for all those researching within the Arts and Humanities, especially those with an interest in the creative, social and political dimensions of sound and listening.
These sessions specifically address the need for further study and practice inspired by, and concerning, this specific turn in research and focus on a particular theme led by an academic/practitioner with invited guests selected to represent a range of approaches.
Session #1 | Thursday 13 February | 1000-1800 | Goldsmiths,
University of London – Register
here
Session # 2 | Thursday 27 February | 1000-1800 | Room 264,
Senate House, London – Register
here
Session #3 | Thursday 12 March | 1000-1800 | Goldsmiths,
University of London – Register
here
Plenary | Thursday 26 March | 1500-1800 | Keynes Library,
Birkbeck, University of London – Register
here
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Ethnography and Film. Exploring Labour, Technology and Mediation in the Egyptian Film Industry
19 Feb (14:00-20:30)
University of Kent
The workshop will offer participants advanced training in
ethnography, applied to the context of the Egyptian Film industry. Dr El
Khachab’s workshop will outline how researchers can successfully apply
ethnographic methodologies, developed in Anthropology, to research issues about
arts and media, especially film. Dr El Khachab will outline the strategies he
developed during his PhD research to gather observations, interviews and
documentary data from creatives and technicians working in the largest and most
influential media industry in the Arab world. He will also provide participants
an insight into how he adapted the presentation of his findings from his PhD
thesis into his forthcoming monograph, The Egyptian Film Industry: Labor,
Technology, Mediation.
Call for proposals | The Essay Film Festival: Research, Critique, Practice
As part of its new
collaborative partnership with CHASE, the Essay Film Festival is inviting
proposals from doctoral students for a student-led symposium exploring
essayistic forms and their relationship to academic research, social critique
and artistic practice.
The conference will combine
research presentations and film screenings, including examples of practice-led
researchers talking through, questioning and “essaying” their own work. This
event will follow the sixth edition of the Essay Film Festival, which will take
place at Birkbeck Cinema, ICA, Goethe-Institut and Institut Français, from 26
March to 4 April 2020.
The symposium will be held at Birkbeck Cinema in May 2020
(exact date to be confirmed), more than a month after the end of the festival.
The idea of the conference is, therefore, to provide a space for critical
reflection and debate, with a certain detachment from the EFF programme itself,
as well as to propose and discuss new directions for the festival in the
future.
Call for Papers | Critical Race Studies and the Premodern: Archive and Seminar
23rd to 24th March – University of East Anglia 8th to 9th June – University of Sussex
Universities of East Anglia and Sussex are hosting two postgraduate
training workshops on critical race studies and the pre-modern. The first of
these will be held at the University of East Anglia, 23-24 March 2020, and will
focus on teaching and pedagogy; the second will be held at The University of
Sussex, 8-9 June 2020, and will focus on research. Both events are designed to
develop students’ professional skills. We invite expressions of interest from
all postgraduates working in the Humanities (giving papers, designing and
chairing sessions, attending).
A steering group has identified themes for the sessions but we are asking for additional help in organising the second day of the conference. We are looking for volunteers to help identify suitable contributors (academic staff, current Birkbeck doctoral researchers or alumni) and to organise for them to take part in each theme.
By taking part in this way you will have the chance to meet other PhD students and contribute to this exciting event. If you are willing to take part we will put you in contact with members of the steering group or others who would like to volunteer and you would be asked to work together on the theme you are interested in.
We invite you to let us know by
the end of Tuesday 4 February if you are willing to help in this way.
BGRS Postgraduate Research Conference: 22-23 April 2020
2020 will mark the 100th anniversary of Birkbeck joining the University of London, and also the 100th anniversary of our first PhD. To celebrate these milestones as we approach the College’s 200th year, the BGRS is organising a centenary conference, led by current PhD students and doctoral alumni.
Provisionally
entitled #BBKConversations, it will be a great opportunity for the whole Birkbeck
postgraduate research community to engage with the big issues of the day. The
steering committee are in the early stages of planning the conference, but we
need your help to shape it.
Over the course of
two days, we hope to arrange lectures, workshops and maybe an exhibition, using
our current research as well as the work of alumni to frame some big
#BBKConversations.
Below are some
themes the committee has come up with, but we would really like your input. What
do you want to discuss and focus on? We are looking for exciting and
innovative ways to bring together researchers in business, humanities, social
sciences, STEM, and everything in between.
Whether or not you want to take an active role in the conference, please put the 22nd and 23rd of April in your diary. If you would like to join the committee, propose a theme or participate in one of the #BBKConversations, please contact the BGRS Manager Tim Hoe (t.hoe@bbk.ac.uk). Get in touch with any and every idea no matter how big or small, and let’s make this a great conference. Please let Tim have your ideas by the 2nd of December so we can discuss them at our planning workshop.
The conference committee will hold a workshop on the 4th of December from 15:00 to 17:00 in Clore 101 – this will be open to anyone who would like to contribute to planning and organisation of the conference.
Suggested themes
If Birkbeck did not exist would we need to invent it? What is the relevance of Birkbeck’s mission and its particular character in relation to society today?
What have Birkbeck’s contributions to society and to research been? The conference could showcase this in relation to alumni. What should Birkbeck’s future research focus be?
What are the historic and current roles for Birkbeck in terms of activism and research? Birkbeck has a radical history but should a university be radical?
Is London a global city-state? If so, is that good or bad for the UK? It was agreed that the relationship between education, social mobility and migration could be explored in the context of London and the rest of the UK.
Access and engagement. What is the future of the university in relation to race and migration, borders and decolonisation of the curriculum? What does a modern doctoral graduate look like and what journeys have led to our research students coming to Birkbeck? It would be interesting to explore some of the different stories and the role of a PhD in different cultures, with opportunities to interact and to explore these issues further at the conference.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of quantitative and qualitative research? This could work as a debate – with representatives from both sides.
What role does objectivity play in research? How does storytelling and narrative relate to research? What is reality – and what are the consequences of choices made when framing research?
What relevance do issues of privacy and digital data have in research? This could include discussion of artificial intelligence, deep learning, big data and ethics.
The following events and opportunities are available via the AHRC funded CHASE Doctoral Training Programme. All of the opportunities below are open to all Arts and Humanities PhD students at Birkbeck, regardless of whether they are funded or self-funded.
Performing Theory Series – Nuclear Hallucinations
Thursday, 24 October 2019 | 17:00 20:00
Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, SE14 6NW
MRB Screen 1
This event inaugurates a new academic year for those of us
doing Screen related research, by hearing from practitioners about the
relationship between their ideas and their images.
Fathima Nizaruddin will be here to screen and discuss her
2016 film, Nuclear Hallucinations.
Various dates from 28 October | 1400-1600 | University of East Anglia
This series of masterclasses is by translators of creative writing for creative writers and is designed to provide insight into these acts of translation that many if not all creative writers engage with. The sessions are small group and are led by the world’s leading translators – including two Booker Prize nominees and one Booker winner. Sessions will be craft focused. Session leaders include Jeremy Tiang, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Duncan Large, Daniel Hahn and Marilyn Booth who will share their expertise and insights exclusively on the topic. Each masterclass will explore from a different perspective the relationship between translation and creative writing – which, although inextricably connected, are rarely considered together.
CHASE Latin for Medieval and Early Modernists 2019/20
4-8 November & 1-5 June 2020 | University of East Anglia
The CHASE Latin for Medievalists and Early Modernists course is a series of workshops and residential weeks designed to provide Latin tuition from beginner to intermediate levels, as well as facilitate the discussion and development of Latin methodologies and research practice. A grasp of Latin is essential to cutting-edge work in medieval and early modern studies but tuition is often hard to come by – we aim to provide CHASE scholars with the necessary skills to produce top-quality research and to form a network of Latin scholars throughout the academy.
Wednesday, 20 November 2019 | Sussex Humanities Lab, University of Sussex
‘Mapping Feminists Coding Practices’, a one-day symposium at the Sussex Humanities Lab, University of Sussex, is the first in a series of events that explore feminist coding practices and the historic context of feminism and technology. It explores some of the affordances and resistances of computational technology. Its aim is to develop a wider understanding of current practices and research which make positive interventions into and within computation, in its widest possible interpretation, from a feminist perspective.
Fifty Years of Skinner’s “Meaning and Understanding in
the History of Ideas”
Friday, 29 November – Saturday, 30 November 2019 |
University of Sussex
This programme takes the opportunity of the fiftieth
anniversary of one of the most influential article on intellectual-historical
methods, Quentin Skinner’s “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas”
(1969), to introduce doctoral participants to the methodological commitments
within the field, engaging them in cutting-edge critical reflection on method.
Participants will gain a thorough foundation in the available methods in the
history of ideas, engage in debates regarding method, and participate in the
critical evaluation of such methodologies, considering possible
alternatives.
The Digital Inclusion: Bridging Divides Conference brings together academics, policymakers, future leaders, the private sector, civil society and community practitioners in order to explore innovative and effective ways of promoting equal access to high-quality digital education and political participation across society. Conference participants will investigate how intelligent technology can foster a greater sense of community and inclusion in a digital world, and increase social and political opportunities.
The Conference will start at 10 am on Thursday, 14 November, and finish at 4 pm on Friday, 15 November 2019. Participants are expected to attend the whole event.
Conference costs
Attendance at this conference is supported by their charitable funds and includes overnight accommodation at Cumberland Lodge on 14 November and all meals during your stay.
Registrations of interest in attending are incited, but attendance will be by invitation only, to ensure broad and balanced representation. If you would like to be part of this conference, please click on the ‘Make Enquiry’ button on the event webpage to let them know how and why you would like to contribute.
Travel bursaries available
They are pleased to be able to offer five bursaries for this conference, to support PhD students working in relevant fields with the costs of travelling to and from Cumberland Lodge. All conference costs, accommodation and meals will be provided free of charge.
To find out more about the conference and to download the bursary application form, please visit their website. The deadline for applications is Monday 14 October.
