The Public Engagement Team provides advice, opportunities, and funding for engagement with research. The team was established to support Birkbeck’s commitment to making research results available to society. By working together with researchers, external partners, and organisations, we aim to create opportunities for knowledge exchange.
We would like to let researchers know that applications for our annual Public Engagement Awards are now open. This award recognises the inspiring public engagement work undertaken by Birkbeck researchers at various levels of their career, including doctoral researchers.
The deadline for applications is midnighton Sunday 23rd February 2020. The Awards Ceremony will be held in April 2020.
We welcome applications in the following six categories:
PhD/Early Career researcher
Communicating Research
Collaboration
Community Engagement
Engaged Practice
Transforming Culture or Public Life
Winners will be awarded £250 towards their research.
Please refer to the Public Engagement team website for more information on the awards and Public Engagement with research at Birkbeck.
Applications and guidelines for the 2020 awards are available below, but please do not hesitate to get in touch with the Public Engagement team if you have any questions.
The team will be attending a research networking event hosted by the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research on Thursday 6th February, 12-2pm (G04, 43 Gordon Square) if you’d like to speak to them in person. You can contact bisr@bbk.ac.uk for more details or to reserve a seat.
The British Science Association’s mission is to transform the diversity and inclusivity of science; to reach under-served audiences and increase the number of people who are actively involved and engaged in science.
They are looking to recruit CREST assessors within the fields of: STEM, Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences and Economics. The CREST Awards is one of their flagship programmes for young people. CREST inspires and engages young people aged 5 to 19-years old with project-based STEM activities.
CREST Assessors sought
CREST assessors help to develop students’ interest and attitudes towards science, along with their scientific and project skills. They do this by assessing Silver and Gold projects against the CREST assessment criteria, providing constructive feedback and encouragement, and sharing their STEM expertise with young people. Often, project assessment is the first time students’ work is seen by someone other than their parents or teachers. Students value the opportunity to share their work with someone with expertise and/or a career in the STEM sector.
Assessing projects can be done on a voluntary or paid basis paid (£4 per Silver Award assessment and £6 per Gold Award assessment), with approximately 5 hours’ worth of assessments per month. All assessment and feedback are carried out via our online platform.
Assessors are trained how to assess projects and give effective feedback. Also, assessing CREST projects count towards STEM Ambassador volunteer hours.
Further details
Please see the complete details for the role here.
Those interested should register their interest in this form and will be contacted shortly afterwards. If you have any questions, would like to know more about CREST Awards or have any thoughts on who else might be interested in the CREST assessor role, please contact Claudia Linan, Education Officer: t. +44 (0)20 7019 4969
Gabriella McGrogan (Department of Criminology) was overall winner of the 2019 Birkbeck 3MT competition for her entry, “Against our Community Standards’- “Outsider” Witnessing of Atrocity and Social Media Censorship”.
Birkbeck doctoral researcher Gabriella McGrogan tells us about taking part in the 2019 Birkbeck 3 Minute Thesis Competition
Trying to figure out how to condense something you’ve been passionately thinking about and shaping over many months, into around the same amount of time you spend brushing your teeth before bed, seems beyond tricky. My supervisor suggested that the Three Minute Thesis competition would be a great opportunity to refine the key points of my project and give me a handy synopsis to roll out at conferences, meetings and in the pub. This seemed worthwhile, if only to avoid the baffled looks my poor friends give me when I’m trying to explain what I do now.
Developing skills
Having worked as a TA in secondary schools in London and Paris, I thought I might have had an advantage in the public speaking stakes. What could be more terrifying than getting 35 teenagers to first, be quiet, and second, listen to you? As it transpires, academic conferences are. Put on by famous institutions and renowned journals, full of ‘grown-up’ academics who have earned themselves the blue tick on Twitter, my first attempt earlier this year was nerve-wracking. The competition was such a brilliant opportunity to develop skills and alleviate imposter syndrome!
Speakers and members of the audience at the 3MT reception
Communicating research
Almost exactly three years ago, I submitted an application to study for Birkbeck’s MSc in Global Criminology. Up until then, I had completed two degrees in Literary and Cultural Studies, but realised that I wanted a change. It’s an understatement to say that the existence of Birkbeck has changed my life for the better. I think the competition, and ensuring my research is accessible and comprehensible to as many people as possible, is a great way to embrace and celebrate the ethos of the college. My research will benefit hugely from the interaction and input of those outside of my discipline and academia in general. Most importantly, I got to engage with students from other departments and learned some fascinating things from their presentations!
I’d strongly encourage any students considering taking part in future to do so. The tips I gained from the training alone were well worth the time spent and I’ve definitely noticed I can explain my project with ease in the aftermath!
Speakers and members of the audience at the 3MT reception
You can read more about the 2019 Birkbeck 3MT Competition here.
On Thursday 2 May, Birkbeck doctoral students took part in the 2019 Three Minute Thesis Competition. Gabriella McGrogan was the overall winner and received a £500 prize.
From left to right: Xiaohong Chen; Gabriella McGrogan (overall winner); Colin Del Strother; Janette Leaf (runner up); Malcolm White; Pernelle Lorette (joint people’s choice); Natalie Lancer; Beverley Hayward; Lexter Woodley (joint people’s choice); Abul Hasan; Shailesh Kumar; Soody Gholam. Apologies to Jo Blackwell who is not pictured here.
2019 3MT Competition
On Thursday 2 May around 70 people attended the Birkbeck Three Minute Thesis Competition. This competition honed and tested the presentation skills of the PhD students who took part, and provided an exciting tour of a diverse range of our current doctoral research. Despite only having 3 minutes for each presentation, contestants (representing all Schools at Birkbeck) were able to convey their research in an insightful and meaningful way, and the event provided both celebration and insight arising from their achievements.
This event, which was held in the Clore Lecture Theatre, was the third time the Three Minute Thesis competition has been run at Birkbeck.
Winner: Gabriella McGrogan
During the exciting series of talks from Birkbeck PhD students, Gabriella McGrogan (Department of Law) was chosen as the overall winner for her compelling presentation ‘Against our Community Standards’- “Outsider” Witnessing of Atrocity and Social Media Censorship’. Gabriella is in her first year as a doctoral researcher in Criminology.
Gabriella told us her reaction on winning the competition:
“It was actually quite a shock! I went last, and had spent the short break prior to the competition repeating what I wanted to say over and over. I was a little overwhelmed by the brilliant calibre of all of the other contestants.
Not only was competing an excellent opportunity to practice public speaking (which I find daunting) but winning, and the conversations invoked afterwards, has helped to give me confidence that my work is interesting to a wide audience and may prove important. It has definitely encouraged me to consider how I can present it for public engagement again in the future.
Whilst competing is a little terrifying, the training and support of everyone at BGRS makes the experience much more comfortable – definitely have a go! It has helped me to condense a plethora of ideas and research into a manageable and coherent explanation. It’s also so enjoyable to engage with students from other departments and made me very proud of the diversity and innovation happening at Birkbeck.”
In addition to the overall winner, the judges awarded a £250 runner up prize to Janette Leaf (Department of English and Humanities) for her talk on ‘Locating the Sympathetic Insect’.
The overall winner and runner up were chosen by a panel of 5 Birkbeck experts (one from each of Birkbeck’s Schools) but the audience also played a key role and were asked to use their votes to choose a People’s Choice winner. The People’s prize was awarded jointly to ‘Lexter Woodley’ (Department of Geography) for her talk ‘An exploration on how female breadwinner couples experience and manage their home lives’
and to Pernelle Lorette (Applied Linguistics and Communication) for her presentation ‘How do you think they feel? Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perception of emotion’.
2019 3MT Talks
A list of all the competitors and their talks is provided below.
Abul Hasan ‘Making Sense of Medical Search’
Natalie Lancer ‘Coaching and Personal Growth: Navigating the tensions of undergraduate life’
Colin Del Strother ‘War for the Souls of London’
Lexter Woodley ‘An exploration on how female breadwinner couples experience and manage their home lives’
Jo Blackwell ‘The needs and experiences of young fathers in prison’
Janette Leaf ‘Locating the Sympathetic Insect’
Beverley Hayward ‘Tales from the Creative Toolbox’
Xiaohong Chen ‘Chinese Credit Growth’
Malcolm White ‘The role of catchwords in English late medieval texts’
Pernelle Lorette ‘How do you think they feel? Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perception of emotion’
Shailesh Kumar ‘Quality, Quantity, and Criminal Justice’
Soody Gholami ‘The Unhomely in Post-Imperial British Literature’
Gabriella McGrogan ‘Against our Community Standards’- “Outsider” Witnessing of Atrocity and Social Media Censorship’
This conference explores distraction and all its meanings and implications. Distraction is commonly thought of as a growing concern or even a sickness of modern society and digital culture. From mindless scrolling to heavy consumerism, the pursuit for entertainment and satisfaction is insatiable, leaving us vulnerable to ruling corporations. Does our lack of control transform us into a conformed mass that is susceptible to tabloid media and the rise of populism? On the other hand, distraction is not necessarily steeped in negativity. In fact, it has had a long and fascinating history. Its German equivalent, ‘Zerstreuung’, comes from the idea of dispersion. At the start of the twentieth-century, Walter Benjamin defined the term as ‘floating attention’, where experience is caused by chance rather than concentration. Does lack of focus in fact allow a sense of freedom and inspiration?
