Humanities PGR conference hailed as a success

The inaugural Postgraduate Research Student Conference, held last week at the Peter Chalk Centre, has been hailed as an outstanding success by both organisers and participants.

More than 100 delegates attended the inaugural College of Humanities PGR student conference, which took place on Monday 30 April and Tuesday 1 May 2012. Over 45 papers on students’ varied research projects were presented in parallel sessions, stimulating much discussion over the two days.

Professor Andrew McRae opened the conference with a thought-provoking keynote address introducing the context is which Humanities research is produced and setting out some of the challenges and opportunities for researchers.

Presenters and delegates spoke appreciatively of the opportunity to share their work with colleagues. Samantha Briggs, an English PhD student, commented, “Presenting at this conference was a great experience. It was a professional, intellectually stimulating and friendly environment in which to discuss my work and learn about other projects within Humanities”.

Professor Andrew Thorpe, Associate Dean for Research and Knowledge Transfer, said, ”I am delighted to see that so many students have taken the opportunity to get involved in the Conference. We have a vibrant research student community and events like this serve to cement existing research networks and allow new links to be developed. The scope and excellence of the papers presented testifies to the high quality research that our students producing.”

The conference dinner, hosted in Reed Hall, gave an opportunity for students to celebrate the conference. James Freeman, Chair of the Organising Committee, summed up the success of the conference by saying, “We are extremely happy with the feedback that we have received from participants and the Committee’s hard work has certainly paid off. I would particularly like to thank our sponsors, INTO and the Researcher Development Programme, for supporting the event. Organising the conference has been both challenging and extremely rewarding and I very much hope that its success can be built on in future years.”

Sponsored by the College of Humanities, the Researcher Development Programme, and INTO.

Date: 10 May 2012