BPSN Bulletin

ISSUE 6
This bulletin aims to keep postgraduate researchers informed of upcoming courses, events and opportunities in the Bloomsbury area.

  • In the spotlight – Bloomsbury Festival
  • What’s new? Voice, Presence and Impact
  • Book now! June courses available

In the spotlight

Bloomsbury FESTIVAL
Taking place over 10 days from 11 – 20 October 2019 across Bloomsbury’s major venues and hidden spaces, the festival aims to amplify creative development in Bloomsbury, give a platform to its emerging talent and create interesting collaborations across arts and science.

For more information visit the Bloomsbury Festival website here

Book now! Courses with places still available

8 June 2019: IMLR Saturday Research Training Workshop: Before, during and after the PhDSAS
This course covers publishing in the modern languages; the PhD viva, before, during and after; organising a conference and giving a conference paper; applying for an academic job, writing CVs, interviews.

11 June 2019: Publication Workshop 1: Writing a Paper, Authorship Issues and Getting PublishedLSHTM
This workshop will cover what journal editors are looking for; authorship issues; conflict of interest. Input from journal editorial staff and academic staff.

12 June 2019: Conducting sensitive interviewsLSE
Sensitive interviews include interviews about emotionally difficult topics or deeply personal issues, interviews with vulnerable populations or research that could have negative consequences for participants.

12 June 2019: Wickedness in Academic Research: How to Avoid Becoming an Innocent VictimLSHTM
To introduce students to some of the complexities around publication ethics and research misconduct and how these can be navigated.

13 June 2019: Your PhDilemmas: One-to-One Sessions for Research StudentsUCL
PhDilemmas can help with work blocks, loss of direction, feelings of isolation, lack of motivation and time and project management.

15 June 2019: Meeting the Challenge of the Part-Time DoctorateUCL
An introductory presentation highlighting the aims and objectives of the session will be followed by group work and plenary discussions on specific challenges and solutions.

17 June 2019: Visualising Data (Level 2): Creating Charts, Dashboards and MapsLSHTM
To guide research colleagues on how they can visually convey their research data via charts, geographic data and dashboards.

20 June 2019: Animal Research: Critical, Challenging & Creative ThinkingUCL
We will consider how animals are used in research both within the UK and at UCL, as well as the broad spectrum of societal opinions regarding animal use in research and how research is communicated to society.

20 June 2019: Overcoming Writer’s Block for Research StudentsUCL
This full-day workshop is designed to provide an awareness of writer’s block for PhD students. It includes strategies to both prevent and unblock.

26 June 2019: How to get Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistance with your researchLSHTM
To provide staff involved in research activities with guidance on how to set up and use an Artificial Intelligence (AI) research assistant.

BPSN Bulletin

bpsn logo

The following bulletin is provided by the Bloomsbury Postgraduate Skills Network (BPSN) of which Birkbeck is a member. Our membership of the BPSN provides Birkbeck PhD students with an expanded range of training and development opportunities.

This Issue:

  • Opportunities – First Mondays: Networking for Entrepreneurs
  • Book now! May courses available
  • June courses

OPPORTUNITIES

First Mondays: Networking for Entrepreneurs
3 June 2019

Everyone is welcome at our monthly networking evenings. Be inspired by successful entrepreneurs and form lasting connections with peers that could help you start or grow your business.Visit UCL Innovation & Enterprise for more information: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/enterprise/events/2019/jun/first-mondays-networking-entrepreneurs-june

Places Still Available in May!

8 May 2019: Public Engagement: Developing Your Own Activity KCL
This half-day workshop will allow you to share your public engagement ideas and work with other participants to critique and improve them. Focus will be on the practicalities of public engagement.

8 May 2019: Format your Thesis UCL
Bring your own laptop or Mac to this hands-on session and learn the essential skills to format and edit your content in Word.

9 May 2019: Organising Successful Academic Events SAS
This session runs through the key areas of organising a successful academic event. We will discuss the different event types, public engagement, impact, timing, venues, audiences, speakers and finance.

15 May 2019: Ethical issues: The use of deception in research LSE *NEW*
Deception is a common feature of some social science research approaches yet absent or even forbidden by professional norms in other closely related social sciences. What is deception?

16 May 2019: Translation and Interpreting – IMLR Graduate Forum SAS
Forum members meet once a month during term-time to share and discuss their work in an informal setting, and invites students to present their research and host film screenings, reading groups and workshops.

16 May 2019: Manage Your PhD Research Data (Data series: 2 of 3) LSE *NEW*
In this practical workshop the LSE Research Data Librarian will give you essential tips for collecting and organising your PhD data so you can locate what you need with ease.

18 May 2019: IMLR Saturday Research Training Workshop: Researching Multilingually. Possibilities and Complexities SAS
The workshop aims to support developing researcher awareness with regard to practices of researching multilingually and in this way, work towards a more clearly articulated ‘researching multilingually’ methodology.

20 May 2019: Cross Purposes: Networking with ease UCL
The workshop is designed to be an event that leads a group though ideas, models and conversations resulting in a greater sense of rapport within a group.

28 May 2019: Specific Heat Capacity – Voice training UCL
Specific Heat Capacity is a three-hour voice workshop based on theatrical as well as practical experience, and aimed towards anyone wishing to develop their vocal ability.

30 May 2019: The PhD Viva in the Humanities and Social Sciences SAS
This session will look at a range of practical matters including choosing examiners, and the roles and strategies of the student, the examiners and the supervisor.

June courses

3 Jun 2019: Scientific classification and scientific realism – Key Concepts in Science and Technology Studies UCL
In this session we will take a look at an important and ongoing debate in contemporary philosophy of science: are we justified in accepting the most secure findings of scientists “at face value”?

3 Jun 2019: Publishing and Archiving Research Data (Data series: 3 of 3) LSE
This workshop will give an introduction to the current and quickly developing data publishing and archiving landscape and why it matters to researchers (including funder requirements).

3 Jun 2019: IMLR Saturday Research Training Workshop: Before, during and after the PhD SAS
This session covers publishing in the modern languages; the PhD viva, before, during and after; organising a conference and giving a conference paper; applying for an academic job, writing CVs, interviews.

12 Jun 2019: Critical Thinking and the Researcher: An Exploration UCL
Critical thinking is one of the higher abilities looked for in the research degree candidate. The greater understanding and application of critical thinking, the better the researcher.

13 Jun 2019: Your PhDilemmas: One-to-One Sessions for Research Students UCL
You are the manager of your PhD. If you want to explore ways of re-gaining control, come along and chat to Dr Louise Baron on a private and confidential one-to-one basis.

CHASE Training Opportunities

CHASE brings together 9 leading institutions engaged in collaborative research activities including an AHRC doctoral training partnership, supporting discipline-based projects, specialising in interdisciplinary research, and research in emerging fields of study and creative practice.

It is central to the ethos at CHASE that serious disciplinary research is interdisciplinary. The following training opportunities are available to research students:

The Future of Arts Research

This programme of innovative skills training is geared toward those involved in practice research, generally, and arts research, specifically. The nature of the training is inherently interdisciplinary, devised and developed by researchers across Fine Art, Performance and Poetry. The training will be suitable and beneficial to researchers at any stage of their project’s development and, while specifically relevant to artist researchers, will be open to researchers in any field.

There are four skills workshops, each dedicated to a key element of practice research. The workshops are scheduled on the following two days:

Workshops 1 & 2:        Wednesday, 14 November 2018 @ 11.00 – 18.00

Workshops 3 & 4:        Wednesday, 27 February 2019 @ 11.00 – 18.00

All of the workshops will be held at Goldsmiths College.

Participants may sign up for individual workshops, or may choose to attend the entire series.

Details of the workshops and how to sign up are here

Peer Coaching taster session (collaborative with WRoCAH DTP)

25 January 2019 | 11:00 – 16:00
London Venue TBC

Would you benefit from being part of a supportive peer group of WRoCAH doctoral researchers for a whole academic year and beyond?
Peer coaching groups that meet regularly are known as ‘action learning sets’. Groups are intended to offer mutual support and coaching. For each meeting group members are invited bring their current challenges and the group works with them to coach them towards potential solutions.

Taking part in this workshop will give you the chance to work with a group of peers to develop your coaching skills to improve collaborative working, communication and professional relationships. The skills of coaching can be applied to help you get the best out of yourself and the best out of others. This can be in your research, in your teaching or in working with or supervising of others.

 

Find out more and register here

 

MARs Session: Radiological Deep Time (by Mountain of Art Research – Goldsmiths)

Various dates, please see below
MARs Research Hub, Seminar Space (Room 5), 43 Lewisham Way London SE14 6NP

This MARs Session will investigate theoretical ideas and artistic practices concerned with radiological deep time. From nuclear landscapes of mining, test sites, and waste storage sites. The session will focus on the problems of decolonising the nuclear, through feminist and forensic analysis, rethinking nuclear landscapes at home, and the mythologies of distant test and mining sites.

Research Student Prep Session Two – 2 Nov, 3-5pm
Research Student Prep Session Three – 23 Nov, 3-5pm
MAIN SESSION / Nuclear Culture Research Symposium: 30 Nov, 10.30am – 6pm & 1 Dec, 10.30am – 2.30pm

 

Find out more and register here

 

Early Modern Matters: Materiality and the Archive & Call for papers

11-12 May 2019
University of East Anglia

From the creation of almanacs, gazettes, and paperbooks – whose ephemeral life span led to their repurposing in manifold ways – to the circulation of sermon collections, commonplace books, and annotated printed volumes, the materiality of the early modern world is unavoidable. By studying archival material texts, not only as vessels for words, but as objects created and put to use in everyday life, we can shed light both on the ‘text’ itself – written, drawn, or otherwise – and on the culture in which it was embedded.

The ‘Early Modern Matters: Materiality and the Archive’ conference will bring together scholars of all whose research intersects with the material textual culture of the early modern period (c. 1500-1700). These disciplines include, but are not limited to: the history of the book, art history, literature, the history of medicine, the history of science, and the history of law. By drawing together these strands of early modern scholarship we hope to expand our understanding of how early modern people interacted with texts as physical objects.

Read full call for papers and register here

 

City Maps – few places left on the Tuesday 21 November session

Birkbeck, Bloomsbury campus

Researching screen media and global cities.

In this workshop, Johan Anderson from King’s College London will lead a workshop with Lawrence Webb (University of Sussex), building on themes introduced in their co-edited books Global Cinematic Cities: New Landscapes of Film and Media (2016) and The City in American Cinema: Film and Postindustrial Culture (forthcoming, 2019). This will comprise a film screening and a workshop at the Birkbeck Cinema. In the workshop session, Andersson and Webb will lead a discussion on the challenges of researching cinema/screen media and cities at a time when both have become destabilized as objects of study. Students will be encouraged to draw on their own PhD projects to consider a range of research methodologies and theoretical approaches to screen media and cities. Johan Andersson and Lawrence Webb will present on their own recent research projects and talk about the challenges of interdisciplinary research and publication. Topics will vary depending on the doctoral students participating, but are likely to include: film, media and the digital turn; gentrification; landscape theory; genre; queer studies; urban history; archival research; location shooting; and urban institutions. Doctoral students working on any urban/national context or historical period are welcome to attend.

Register for this or other City Map sessions

Health and Safety Training Available for Research Projects

These courses require a password to sign up. See end of post for details.

Risk Assessment using Sevron

Thursday August 30th. 10.00 – 13.00 A half-day course on general health and safety risk assessment with an introduction to the Sevron online risk assessment system. Book here

COSHH Risk Assessment using Sevron

This course is for people needing to assess the risks of the use of hazardous substances under the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations (COSHH). The course introduces the Sevron online risk assessment system and its use for COSHH assessments. There are several opportunities to undertake this training.

Wednesday September 12 morning session 10.00 – 13.00.

Wednesday September 12 afternoon session 14.00 – 17.00.

Thursday September 20 morning session 10.00 – 13.00.

Thursday September afternoon session 27 14.00 – 17.00.

Level 2 Award in Fire Safety

A one-day course for persons with special responsibilities for fire safety such as fire wardens. Wednesday September 19. 9.30 – 17.00. Book here.

Level 2 Award in Health and Safety at Work

A one-day course for persons with special responsibilities for general health and safety such as Departmental Safety Coordinators. September 25. 9.30 – 17.00. Book here.

Level 2 Award in Manual Handling

A one-day course for staff undertaking manual handling tasks as a regular part of their work. Monday 10 September 09.30 – 17.00. Book here.

 

These courses require a password to sign up. Follow the links and enter “BBK” at the Eventbrite page.