Battle of Ideas Festival on 18-19 October 2014
The Battle of Ideas festival, organised by The Institute of Ideas, provides a forum for free thinking, debate and discussion on a host of topics. It will take place on the weekend of 18 and 19 October at the Barbican in London, one of the world’s leading art centres.
This year’s programme includes important keynote debates such as:
- Should we fear democracy?;
- Why are we afraid to judge?;
- Hashtag feminism: radical or banal?;
- Big Data: big danger? and
- After Gaza: the return of anti-Semitism?
New PhD portal for postgraduate recruitment & advice
Leading global jobs board jobs.ac.uk, which focuses on careers in academia, research, science and related professions, has launched a new portal supporting postgraduate recruitment.
The new PhD portal provides postgraduate students with a dedicated resource for quickly and easily searching for the latest PhD programmes, research projects and studentships from universities and research institutes worldwide.
The Portal also provides careers support for doctoral students, in the form of ebooks and articles. See http://www.jobs.ac.uk/phd for further details.
SOTA announces workshops with the Research and Strategic Bidding Office
Karen Lewis and Helen Backhouse from the Research and Strategic Bidding Office will be coming to the School of the Arts to run two sessions to help facilitate grant finding and bid writing in the School of the Arts.
Revamped A-Z list of databases
Those of you who prefer to access the library’s electronic databases directly via their native interfaces may be interested to know that the library’s A-Z list of databases has had something of a makeover.
The original alphabetically arranged list is still there, but now you can filter the list by resource name. There is also a new ‘Subjects & categories‘ classification so it is easier to find the most appropriate resources for your discipline.
New FOI exemption for research information
Phil Oakman, the University Records Manager, has just drawn my attention to the new research exemption in the Freedom of Information Act which came into force on 1st October.
The Act states:
“Information obtained in the course of, or derived from, a programme of research is exempt information if:
Next Grounded Theory Forum – 8th October 2014
Submitted by Sarah Neill
The next Grounded Theory Forum will be held on Wednesday 8th October from 1-3pm, in C226 Cottesbrooke, Park Campus.
Two interesting articles that have used Grounded Theory in advertising research will be discussed. One is looking at offensive advertising and the other is advertising to children.
For more information and to register please email Sarah Neill.
Research students: Would you like MS Office for free?
University of Northampton IT Services are pleased to announce that all University of Northampton students are now able to download Microsoft Office 365 for free – saving £59.99.
You will receive the latest Microsoft Office suite including Word, Excel and PowerPoint available on up to 5 devices across Mac, PC and mobile.
To download Microsoft Office 365 please visit: https://portal.microsoftonline.com and login using your University (student) email address and password. If you have any questions or queries about this offer, please contact itservices@northampton.ac.uk
Supervisor Development Programme 2014-15
The university runs a development programme for supervisors who are new to research degree supervision, co-ordinated by Professor Ian Livingstone. It is a validated university postgraduate course and it is delivered as two modules – Workshops and Observation. It is a requirement of our research degree regulations that everyone who is new to supervision takes the first module – the workshops. The second module is optional but if you complete both you are awarded the Postgraduate Certificate in Research Degree Supervision which you can count as one completion when putting together supervisory teams. Even if you have previously supervised research students, there may be some elements of the programme that you would find useful.
In 2014/15 the workshops will run 9.30-4.00 on Thursday 5th March 2015, Tuesday 10th March and Friday 13th March. There will be a further session of seminars led by participants – dates to be negotiated.
If you are intending to join this programme in 2014/15 and have not yet contacted Ian Livingstone, please do so now. (x 3362; email: ian.livingstone@northampton.ac.uk)
New Term, New Research Developments in the CCN&CT
September is upon us and as well as a host of new undergraduates, the month has seen a number of new research developments within the Center for Contemporary Narrative and Cultural Theory.
10 ways that PhD students can use Twitter
Here’s an interesting blog post from the University of Warwick…
To find out what other research students are discussing then try searching Twitter for one of these hashtags: #phdchat; #phdadvice; #phd; #acwri; #phdforum or #gradchat.
If you haven’t used Twitter before then there is plenty of help to get you started.
Image credit: By David Ferreira [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
UON Graduate School Blog 