Wednesday 13th November, St Lukes Campus, Exeter
Through its ‘Cohort Building’ funds from the ESRC, the SWDTP supports an Annual Conference which rotates between each of the five partner HEIs.
This year the Annual Conference was hosted by the University of Exeter at the St Lukes Campus on November 13th. This event is designed and run by PGR students, for students, who take on an enormous responsibility to design and deliver a high quality conference to social science researchers across the five sites but also opening up free attendance and access to PGRs across the UK. It attracted 175 participants and was the most creative and innovative conference delivered in our long history of conferences so far.
Covering a wide range of social science topics, the team also managed to represent the cross-council and interdisciplinary nature of the programmes funded through the DTP and include the broader PhD journey, PGR skills and Early Career Researcher interests. This included singing your thesis, radio thesis interviews, interactive sessions and workshops, plus a range of talks following a review of conference abstracts along the themes of ‘Effective and Innovative Communication of Research’.
Engaging keynote talks were also provided showing how puppetry, positive and negative media engagement and other communication methods can provide new platforms to engage individuals in your research. As well as a fascinating talk from Chris Shaw, the Clerk of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in the House of Commons. who spoke about the challenges they face and how researchers can actively engage with their plans.
For a recap of the day, you can head to the Twitter Moment created by the Conference Twitter account here.
There is also a video of our Annual Conference hosted by the University of Bristol last year at the SS Great Britain:
Next year will be Bath University, supported by the SWDTP Hub. More details available from Sonja Foster, SWDTP Manager.