University of Northampton Creative Writing Lecturer Alan Smith celebrated in The Guardian
This week The Guardian has published Alan Smith‘s final Philosophy for Prisoners column alongside a photograph specially commissioned for the article. On 26 February 2013, Smith was the centre of a photo-shoot which celebrated over 10 years of his writings as a Guardian columnist.
Invitation to the 8th Annual Research Student Poster Competition
UN Research Students are invited by the Graduate School to enter the University’s Research Poster competition, which takes place on Wednesday 8th May. The winner will receive a £100 prize, with two runner-up prizes of £75.
The aim of this event is for students to create a poster that explains their research to a mixed audience of non subject-specialists. The poster competition is open to all research students from all years of study. If you are in your first year, you can just present preliminary results or some data and ideas for further consideration. Supervisors are invited to come along and support their students on the day.
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Improve your research skills with a little help from CfAP
Choosing the right tool to analyse your data or finding the best way to structure your findings can be a fraught process. However help is on hand from the Centre for Achievement and Performance – otherwise known as CfAP.
CfAP exists to help all students, including those doing research degrees, achieve their academic potential:
“If you were training for the Olympics you may need to work on aspects of weight, speed or flexibility to improve your performance and to gain insights into how your body works. Visiting CfAP should be regarded in a similar way – you wish to work on aspects of your academic work to improve your performance and to gain a better understanding of how you learn. As with athletes, taking responsibility for your own development leads to success.”
(Sandy Gilkes, National Teaching Fellow)
CfAP staff have recently created a new site on NILE; it is open to everyone and there is no need to enrol. The site contains a huge range of materials to support all aspects of academic endeavour. Read the rest of this entry
SAGE permits authors to deposit full text in NECTAR
As of today, if you have an article published by SAGE Publications you can upload the accepted version of your full text to NECTAR immediately. With no embargo.
SAGE has just announced a review of its author archiving policy and now permits immediate deposit of the post-peer-review, accepted copy of an article in the author’s own institutional repository.
(See details of SAGE’s publishing policies here.)
This represents a very positive response to recent developments in the sector (such as the Finch report and the revised RCUK policy on open access) and means that SAGE can now promote itself as a SHERPA RoMEO ‘Green‘ publisher, along with 349 other publishers including Cambridge University Press, Elsevier, Intellect, John Wiley and Sons, Kluwer, and Public Library of Science.
East Midlands Universities Annual Conference – urgent call for Chairs and presentations!
Research Students!
The EMU Research Student Conference will be held on September 6th and provides a unique opportunity for East Midlands Universities postgraduate researchers to showcase their research findings. There will be opportunities for 50 ten minute research talks and 14 three minute research snapshot presentations during the conference. AND would you like a chance to chair a session?
If you would like to give a 10 minute presentation or a 3 minute research snapshot you have until April 3rd to register your interest. See the EMU Website for details on how to apply.
You have until April 8th to let me know if you would like to be nominated as a Chair.
Please email me asap.
April & May Graduate School workshops
Here are April and May’s workshops:
18 Apr Consulting as a Career: Institute of Consulting event. 10:30-1:30pm (includes lunch!)
25 Apr Preparing for Transfer 3-5pm
2 May Correlation and regression: basic theory and SPSS 5-7pm
7 May Preparing for conferences and networking 11-1:30pm
9 May Successful research proposals & research ethics 9:30-1:30pm (includes lunch)
16 May Funding your postdoctoral career 4:30-6:30pm
23 May Working with Children (ethical & practical issues for researchers) 5-7pm
30 May Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis 5-7pm
Upcoming events: Academic Poster competition May 8th, Annual Postgrad Research Conference June 27th.
See our full list of workshops, including May and June 2013, complete with Eventbrite links for you to book your place.
Launch of the UK Data Service
The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has just announced the launch of a new national service that will consolidate and incorporate four established data services and websites:
- Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS)
- Census.ac.uk
- Secure Data Service (SDS)
- Survey Question Bank (SQB)
The UK Data Service offers a a single point of access to a wide range of secondary data including large-scale government surveys, international macrodata, business microdata, qualitative studies and census data from 1971 to 2011. Read the rest of this entry
Engaging with the digital world: An event for arts and humanities research students
The University of Oxford and the Arts and Humanities Research Council have collaborated to offer a one-day interactive training session for postgraduate students across the arts and humanities, focusing on public engagement and digital media. “Transforming Postgraduate Research: Engaging with the Digital World” will be held on Monday 17 June at the University of Oxford, and aims to provide introductory training in using digital media to disseminate academic research. Participants will explore the value of digital engagement and learn how a range of digital platforms can be used to enhance academic profile. The event features practical workshop sessions, keynote lectures, student-led Q&A and discussion sessions between participants and a panel of experts. Topics covered include:
- Social media(s) and academia
- Blogs and academic websites
- Creative technologies and impact
- Showcasing and developing educational resources
The event is open to students across all disciplines in the arts and humanities and costs just £12. To book or for more information see www.thec21scholar.com/oxford. The deadline for registration is 15 April 2013.
University response to HEFCE consultation on open access and the REF post 2014
The university has responded to HEFCE’s first consultation on open access and research assessment post 2014.
In support of their objective of increasing the proportion of research outputs that are made available in open access form, HEFCE’s proposals centred on the requirement that all research outputs submitted to future assessment exercises should be made open access as soon as possible after publication:
“To support and encourage the further implementation of open access we intend to introduce a requirement that all outputs submitted to the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise are published on an open-access basis, where this is reasonably achievable and where, given the medium in which the output is presented, the concept of ‘open access’ applies.” (HEFCE, 2013, para 8)
HEFCE requested responses focused on several key issues, as follows: Read the rest of this entry
UON Graduate School Blog 