Keele Postgraduate Conference 2021

Welcome to the Institute’s sixth postgraduate conference, in conjunction with our colleagues in the Keele Doctoral Academy (KDA).  As ever, the conference represents a great opportunity to celebrate the fantastic range and diversity of postgraduate work in the University.

Date: Tuesday 8 June 2021 at 9.15am
Location: Microsoft Teams

To read a review of this year's conference, along with all the competition winners and entries, click on the button below

Click on the buttons below to download and view each poster entrant or alternatively, click on POSTER GALLERY to view the posters via Photo Shelter

Advertise your Research competition

This brand new competition set you a goal to advertise your research to the general public. The challenge was to communicate your research in a novel, non-traditional format and most of all, to think creatively! You could write a poem or a short piece of music or animation. You could draw a picture or capture an image. Each advert must be up to a maximum of 150 words or no longer than 2 minutes in length.

Click on the buttons below to; download the Conference Programme and to read the Book of Abstracts 

Click on the buttons below to access the Voting Forms for the Poster and Advertise your Research competitions.  Voting closes at 12.45pm on the day of the conference.

We have an exciting set of activities lined up for the 6th Annual Keele Postgraduate Conference.

The conference is a great opportunity to celebrate the fantastic range and diversity of postgraduate work in the University.  Now more than ever, it's important we stay connected as a research community and share what makes us great.

This year’s conference includes:

• Virtual poster gallery with online voting on the day
This is an opportunity for postgraduates to showcase their research in a visually impactful way i.e. strong images with an easy to read layout. It should also be accessible to a non-specialist audience with engaging language.  Their accompanying abstract should be a single paragraph, no longer than 200 words and it should clearly draw out the relevance of the research, highlighting why it is important and interesting to someone who is not a specialist in that area.

The competition will bring our interdisciplinary research community together, allowing attendees and presenters to discover more about the huge range of postgraduate research projects being carried out across Keele.

Presenters should submit their poster entry as a PDF to ilas@keele.ac.uk by no later than Thursday 27 May.

• The popular Three Minute Thesis competition
Could you describe your research in just three minutes with one PowerPoint slide?

As with the poster competition, presenters should explain what their research is about and how they plan to carry it out but also why it matters and who it affects. You can view videos of the amazing entrants from the 2020 competition here.

This year each Faculty ran their own 3MT heats with winners and a runner up being put forward to this year’s Keele Postgraduate Conference.

Heats took place as follows:

Natural Sciences: 29th and 30th April
Humanities and Social Sciences: 30th April
Health: 6th May

The semi-finalist from the PG Conference in June will be put forward to the KPA Bob Beattie Awards evening on 16th June, to compete against the 3MT competition winner from November, Amy Worrall. The overall winner will be put forward to represent Keele in the national competition, competing against postgraduate researchers from across the UK.

Click here for Three Minute Thesis Guidelines.

• Advertise your Research
This is a brand new competition! The goal is for postgraduate to advertise their research to the general public. It needs to be communicated in a novel, non-traditional format and might suit individuals involved in practice-based research. Think creatively! It can be a poem or a short piece of music or animation. Participants can draw a picture or capture an image. We're looking for people to think of something a little different from posters. 

Audio and visual entries are required to have an accompanying statement (150 words maximum), to connect with the image/audio. Ensuring viewers/listeners, who know nothing about the research topic, understand the research presented.

• Open Research Award
As part of Keele’s commitment to Open Research, we are launching an Open Research Award at this year's conference, to recognise and reward postgraduate research students who have made—or who demonstrate concrete plans to make—strong contributions to the principles of Open Research in their doctoral studies.

Applicants have been invited to prepare a written case study of no more than 2 pages. Each case study should describe how the applicant has engaged in (or plans to engage in) one or more of the Open Research practices. Further information is available on this document: PGR Open Research Award 2021 - Guidelines

You can also watch a short video here from Dr Jim Grange (Academic Lead for Research Integrity & Improvement) about why you should engage with Open Research.

A panel of judges will assess the applications prior to the conference, and summaries of the shortlisted and winning entries will be given at the conference, with a presentation of the winning entry.

All four competitions will have prizes associated with them and winners can choose a voucher from a selection of suppliers including Love2shop.
Prizes will be announced during the day and we encourage all postgraduates (PGR/PGT) to get involved.

• Panel discussions and research specific break-out sessions
In between time for networking with competition entries, we will be hosting a panel discussion and several break-out sessions including:

• Job Applications, CVs and Interviews - Making a Good Impact.
• Inside perspectives and tips for grant applications - Early Career/Post Doc.
• Researcher conversations.
• Designs for opportunity: scoping potential postgraduate project funding.
• In the company of friends: research with external partners.
• Research journaling with Start to Success.

The deadline for applications for all competitions is Wednesday 19 May 2021 by 12.00 noon.

You can get some inspiration from last November's conference by viewing the Posters here and videos of the Three Minute Thesis entrants here.

For staff and students who wish to simply attend the event virtually and support colleagues, click on the button below to register.