2018
Turning Heads: Changing Minds
The Institute’s third postgraduate conference showcased the fantastic range and diversity of postgraduate work in the University.
Conference date: Thursday 19th April 2018 11.00am - 4.00pm Keele Hall Ballroom
Welcome to the Institute’s third postgraduate conference; a great opportunity to celebrate the fantastic range and diversity of postgraduate work in the University.
All postgraduate students were invited to share their work in progress and present their research, dissertation project and course-related posters to a cross disciplinary audience of peers, students and staff.
Participants were expected to present their work as a poster, although artefacts or performance may also be offered. This is a different and alternative opportunity in addition to those available within the faculties and research institutes and the challenge here is to communicate your work in an accessible and inspiring way to an informed, but non-specialist audience.
Here are the highlights from the conference:
Despite the lure of the Italianate gardens on the year’s hottest day so far, a record number of visitors and participants attended the 2018 ILAS Postgraduate Conference, Turning Heads last Thursday in Keele Hall. With over 130 attendees, 62 posters from 14 schools, plus 12 Three Minute Thesis presentations, the Ballroom was abuzz and it was a great celebration of the postgraduate work across the University.
Opening the conference, Pro-Vice-Chancellor Professor Helen O’Sullivan, welcomed participants to an exciting showcase of the talent, creativity and hard work of our PG community. She emphasised the value of work that students were doing in opening up their research to critical discussion and critical conversations with other disciplines, noting that the skills that students were developing in doing this have never been more important.
All seats in the house were full for the afternoon ILAS 3MT competition which was introduced and hosted by Pro Vice-Chancellor Professor David Amigoni.
Our keynote speaker Jonathan Lutwyche, CEO of Yordas Group enjoyed the full day at the conference and provided an engaging keynote talk entitled ‘Inspiring Impact in Industry’. Yordas is located at the Lancaster Environment Centre at Lancaster University and is a leading provider of environment consultancy services. From a modest ‘start up’ with just 3 staff, Yordas now employs 60 people and has international capacity in North America, Asia and Europe and commercial operations in 40 countries. From the very beginning postgraduate researchers have played a central role in Yordas Group’s evolution and about 80% of the workforce have come from postgraduate research as Masters and PhD students at Lancaster.
The day ended with thanks to everyone for their participation and efforts and prizes for some.
The Poster Prizes, £100, £50, 2 x £25 Amazon vouchers were awarded to the following people and their posters:
1st Prize
Claire Melia, School of Psychology
Who is to blame for alcohol addiction?
2nd Prize
Emma Harrison, School of Psychology
Student bullying in higher education: The story so far
Joint 3rd Prize
Rachel Smith, School of Life Sciences
Carbon capture and storage: Reducing harmful atmospheric emissions
and
Katie Heath, School of Life Sciences
The People’s Prize, £50 Amazon voucher, was awarded for communication and everyone was encouraged to vote for one person whose work and their presentation of this had inspired them to think a little bit differently.
This was awarded to Olly Robertson, School of Psychology:
"It just feels so good” – The effects of f***ing (and other swearwords)
Two runners up in this category were both awarded a KPA voucher for a meal for two at the KPA:
Amy Brown-Lyons, Institute for Science & Technology in Medicine (ISTM)
Can we recruit the brain’s immune cells to help treat Parkinson’s disease?
and
Laurna Bullock, Institute for Primary Care & Health Sciences
This year ILAS is again working with JADE to present a special student journal edition. This will feature all of the presenters’ abstracts plus further contributions. Everyone is invited to offer a short article which may be discursive or reflective and should be about 500-800 words in length. In line with this years ‘Changing Minds’ theme we would be particularly interested in pieces which reflect upon your experience of the conference and the ways that this impacted upon your thinking and learning.
Look out for photos from the day on our Facebook page soon www.facebook.com/ILASatKeele and do keep in touch via Twitter www.twitter.com/KeeleILAS.
