UON’s Annual Research Conference 2024, “Strength in Diversity”, held on June 25th and 26th, featured a diverse range of inspirational and impactful research, showcased over a 2-day event. The first day, in-person at Waterside, kicked off with a research artefacts exhibition where people were encouraged to touch the exhibits; play games, wear scarves, look into microscopes and read a range of books authored by our researchers. Dr Cathy Smith, Dean of Research and Knowledge Exchange, opened the conference and announced the winners of the annual Images of Research Competition. Lewis Collins & Sonika Divakar won the Judge’s Vote, with a runner up place to Karen Anthony. The Public Vote competition was won by Postgraduate Researcher, Adil Farooq.

The main conference programme followed, with sessions on Health & Wellbeing, Technology & Innovation and Historical & Cultural Analysis. We were treated to a choir performance in between this and sessions on Education & Learning and Social & Cultural Studies. The afternoon saw an entertaining ECR-Led Pecha Kucha (20 slides each for 20 secs) followed by parallel sessions on Interdisciplinary Collaboration and Diversity and Inclusion, along with a selection of workshops and roundtables through the day.

Day 2 was delivered online and opened by UON’s VC, Prof Anne-Marie Kilday. Sessions covered Healthcare, Interdisciplinary Approaches to Research, Human Experience and Social Impacts, with the University’s annual 3-Minute Thesis competition held after the lunchbreak. Four brave PGRs entered and the winner of the competition was PGR student in FHES, Charlotte Marshall. Neill Friedman, a PGR in FAST, won the public vote.

If you have any feedback, questions or comments then please contact one of the Organising Team – Lee Machado, Lorna Jowett, Sian Davies-Vollum from FAST; Simone Apel and Lina El-Azhab from the Graduate School. The Team would like to thank and congratulate all our speakers, chairs, attendees for making this such a successful event.