Open Access Week 2019

Throughout 21-25 October Birkbeck PhD students are invited to attend events organised by the Birkbeck Library as part of International Open Access Week.

These events will let you learn about developments which are of increasing importance to your current and future research. The programme includes the following events – registration is via the following links.

Changes and challenges in transformative open access agreements

Monday 21st October, 11.00-11.30, Library Training Room

This session will give an overview of the changes and challenges in publishing models, for libraries with the move from traditional subscriptions, to a hybrid of subscriptions and open access, to transformative agreements which seek to offset article processing charges (APCs).

Data Management Plans for students

Tuesday 22nd October, 11.00-12.30, Library Seminar Room

This is an interactive 1.5hour long session. There will be discussion and opportunities for questions.

This session is aimed at Postgraduate Research Students including Doctoral and Masters Research Students, who are creating or reusing data, or who may require ethical approval, and would like to create a Data Management Plan (DMP) to help guide them through their project.

These plans 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.

Research Data Management and Open Access – drop in session

Wednesday 23rd October, 13.00-16.00, MAL 420

If you have questions about open access publishing, where you should put your research data, what Plan S is and what it means at Birkbeck, then pop in to this session to find the answers. David McElroy is our Research Data Support Manager and Paul Rigg our Senior Assistant Librarian (Repository & Digital Media Management) and they will be on hand to talk through any queries that you have. This is an open session, no booking required.

If you have questions about open access publishing, where you should put your research data, what Plan S is and what it means at Birkbeck, then pop in to this session to find the answers. David McElroy is our Research Data Support Manager and Paul Rigg our Senior Assistant Librarian (Repository & Digital Media Management) and they will be on hand to talk through any queries that you have. This is an open session, no booking required.

Plan S – what is it and what does it mean for Birkbeck?

Wednesday 23rd October, 16.00-17.00, Library Seminar Room

Plan S aims to significantly shake up the current Open Access publishing ecosystem. This session will give a brief overview of who’s behind it, what the “plan” is, what the “S” actually means, and how it could affect us.

Making the most of Scopus

Thursday 24th October, 11.00-11.30, Library Training Room

Come and get an overview of some of the analysis tools (journals, search results, authors) in the database Scopus.

Open Access board game

Friday 25th October, 12.30-13.30, Library Training Room

open access board game

Come and play the Open Access board game to get a better understanding of what Open Access is and how it works. You are welcome as a team of up to 4 people or as an individual to join others.

Birkbeck PhD and MPhil Awards August 2019

Birkbeck Research Degrees awarded in August 2019

Birkbeck awards over 100 PhDs each year. In August 2019, eleven Birkbeck Researchers were awarded for their work in the following areas:

School of Arts

Department of English, Theatre and Creative writing

department of film, media and cultural studies

School of Business, Economics and Informatics

Department of Computer Science and Information Systems

DEPARTMENT OF Organizational Psychology

School of Law

Department of law

School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy

DEPARTMENT OF Applied Linguistics and Communication

Department of History, classics and archaeology

Department of Politics

Department of PSYCHOSOCIAL STUDIES

  • 1 DPsych in Family and Systemic Psychotherapy



DANDELION – Call for editors

https://dandelionjournal.org/

Dandelion seeks new EDITORS to assist in the editing of the journal’s new volume. Current Birkbeck School of Arts Postgraduate Students are encouraged to join the Editorial Team for the academic year 2019/20. No publishing or editorial experience is necessary: you will learn editorial skills as you go. Although, if any, these will be a valuable asset.

Your research area should lie within, or across, the fields of: History of Art, Museum Cultures, Film, Media and Cultural Studies, English and Humanities, and Cultures and Languages. You can be at any stage in your research. We are looking for:

General Editors

Suitable for PhD students

General Editors will start the production of the new Volume in the Autumn Term of 2019 (or soon after), and will be responsible for the editorial supervision of the next Dandelion volume. They will be selecting the new theme and writing the Call for Papers, setting the timetable for the issue, commissioning articles, and sharing production management tasks.

Subject Editors

Suitable for MA or PhD students

Subject Editors will be required to edit and copyedit two or three articles (of between 1,500 and 8,000 words); the timing of this work will be confirmed by the appointed General Editors. You will be asked to attend two or three editorial meetings with the rest of the team. You will also be welcome to contribute to events planning, design, typesetting etc. Subject Editors are assigned to articles, and therefore advise contributors, according to their subject area expertise.

Find out more

The outgoing Editors will be happy to meet the new team to discuss the handover and for further advice.
If you are interested then we would love to hear from you. Please send an email expressing your interest in either editorial role, and detailing any relevant experience you may have, by 11th October to mail@dandelionjournal.org. In your email please include details of which research programme you are enrolled in, and the research area you are focusing on. If you have any questions then please do get in touch – we will be happy to answer them.

We look forward to hearing from you.

The editors
Donatella Valente and Jenny Turner
www.dandelionjournal.org

British Library Doctoral Open Days

The image “british library” by fsse8info is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 

January and February 2020

The British Library has scheduled a season of Doctoral Open Days in January and February 2020.

Booking is essential and tickets will become available via their Box Office in mid-October. The Open Days are designed for first year PhD students who are new to the British Library.  The days explain the practicalities of using the Library and its services – including navigating the physical and online collections. Students are encouraged to choose the event which is of most interest and relevance to their studies, from the following:

2020

Academic Open House

The Access and Engagement Department sits at the heart of Birkbeck’s commitment to improving the access and success of non-traditional students in London. We work with groups who may otherwise feel excluded from taking a step into higher education, including trade union members without a formal qualification above level 4; FE and adult education college students; forced migrants and those who have been out of education for a number of years.

Birkbeck’s academic and research community can support our work in a range of ways, including:

  • delivering free community lectures and/or learning activities;
  • running workshops to support those facing organisational change at work;
  • helping people to develop the skills they need to successfully navigate structural inequality;
  • offering insights into community priorities through their research.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Find out more

To find out more and discuss possible collaborations, the Department is holding an Academic Open House event on Thursday 26th September from 3-5pm in Malet Street B02. The event is open to PhD candidates, Early Career Researchers and academics at Birkbeck. We will present further information about our work across London and our priorities for 2019/20, and there will be the opportunity for discussion with other academic colleagues and members of the Department.

Big IdeasDownload
Academic Open HouseDownload

Register to attend here

To register your interest, please complete the following short form: https://bbk.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/open-house-register-of-interest
For refreshments purposes it would be helpful to know how many are able to attend the Open House event, but even if you are unable to join us on the 26th, we’d still love to hear from you so please do complete the form so we can keep in touch about future opportunities.

Birkbeck PhD and MPhil Awards July 2019

Birkbeck Research Degrees awarded in July 2019

Birkbeck awards over 100 PhDs each year. In July 2019, fourteen Birkbeck Researchers were awarded for their work in the following areas:

School of Arts

Department of Cultures and languages

Department of English, Theatre and Creative writing

department of film, media and cultural studies

  • 1 MPhil in Visual Arts and Media

School of Business, Economics and Informatics

DEPARTMENT OF Economics, Mathematics and Statistics

DEPARTMENT OF Management

School of Law

Department of law

School of Science

department of biological sciences

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES

School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy

DEPARTMENT OF Applied Linguistics and Communication

Department of History, classics and archaeology

Department of philosophy

CHASE Essentials

CHASE Essentials

CHASE Essentials training is available to all Arts and Humanities PhD students at Birkbeck, regardless of whether you they are funded by CHASE or not.

About this training

CHASE Essentials is a year-round programme of training and development workshops and residential programmes and is part of the training opportunities available to all arts and humanities doctoral researchers at CHASE institutions.

Arts and Humanities PhD students at CHASE member institutions can apply for expenses using the form here (Word document, best viewed on a laptop or desktop). Approval for the travel claim must be sought in advance.

Other training opportunities are available here www.chase.ac.uk/development

2020/21 Fellowship Competition: Royal Museums Greenwich (deadline 6 October)

Fellowship applications invited

Royal Museums Greenwich (which comprises the National Maritime Museum, the Royal Observatory, the Queen’s House and Cutty Sark) has a well-established programme supporting high-quality research providing new perspectives on our collections. Fellowships are stipendiary, and can run for a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 12 months. Applications should engage with our thematic priorities which include:

  • The migration of people, objects and ideas
  • British identities in imperial, post-colonial and global contexts
  • Human perspectives on the modern maritime world
  • Understandings of nation, community and identity in museum practice
  • Developments in citizen heritage, public engagement and heritage science
  • Female patronage, art, architecture and performance in the Stuart court
  • Naval/military uniform and concerns regarding status, display and identity
  • Engagement with our collections is essential, and we welcome applications from within a wide range of disciplines and cross-disciplinary approaches. We also seek to encourage creative and practice-based projects in areas such as the visual arts, performance and literature.
Eligibility

The fellowship programme mainly supports study at a post-doctoral or equivalent level. We encourage applications from scholars of all nationalities and career stages who have been awarded a PhD, or who expect this to occur before the start of the fellowship. Queries regarding eligibility should be sent to: research@rmg.co.uk

Further information about our fellowship competition can be found here

Deadline for applications

6 October 2020

Highlighted AHRC CHASE Training Opportunities

Mining Back: Data Skills for Researching Corporations and Governments

Saturday 14 September | 12:15-13:25
Goldsmiths, University of London | RHB 307  

Dr. Anna Feigenbaum, Principal Academic in Digital Storytelling, Bournemouth University (designed with Tom Sanderson, The Centre for Investigative Journalism)
 
While corporations and governments gain more and more access to our data, ‘researching up’ or investigating governments and corporations is often riddled with obstacles. While the move in recent years toward open data has brought with it increased transparency and information access, not all information is equally available. Critical documents remain hidden behind paywalls, blocked by confidentiality agreements, or deemed too sensitive to be brought into public view. Even when Freedom of Information requests return results, they can come back worded in generalisations or dressed up in retractions.
 
These challenges prompt researchers and campaigners to employ creative methods for legally obtaining data from governments and corporations. In this workshop we bring together key strategies for investigative research, showcasing a range of data sources, as well as freely available and easy to access tools that can be used to ‘mine back’ or obtain and analyse data of government and corporate elites. Geared toward non-coders, qualitative researchers and those with limited budgets and resources, these strategies for ‘mining back’ include advanced searching techniques, data scraping from a webpage, liberating PDF tables, and creating visual power-maps.  
 
This workshop will focus on the reproductive technologies industry in the UK, but most of the skills and resources we will introduce are adaptable across any research project engaged in investigating corporations or governments. 

Students wishing to attend please email with confirmation: grace.tillyard@gmail.com

CHASE Latin for Medieval and Early Modernists 2019/20

Monday 4 – Friday 8 November 2019 & Monday 10 – Friday 14 June 2020 (plus two single day workshops – TBC)

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.

Residential week 1 will be held from Monday 4th to Friday 8th November 2019 and residential week 2 will be held from Monday 10th to Friday 14th June 2020, both at UEA. Two single-day workshops will take place in London between the residential weeks with dates TBC. Please note that accommodation for the residential weeks is booked in advance, and so if you subscribe to a residential week and are subsequently unable to attend it is important to notify us as soon as possible.

The skills developed in this course over the past two years have enabled CHASE researchers to pursue previously unavailable avenues of research, and besides structured language tuition we include classes on palaeography and archival research to ground our linguistic work in practice.

Although this course primarily teaches on classical Latin it will feature texts from a wide range of historical periods and is suitable for medievalists, early modernists, and scholars from any background whose research engages with the language.

Register here