The Month Ahead: March - April 2017
Researcher Development Programme
Workshops and webinars coming up in March and April include:
- Postgraduate funding: considering the alternatives: 22nd March - spaces available
- Practical presentation skills (2-part workshop): 27th March and 3rd April - fully booked, waiting list in operation
- Graphics in R (2-part workshop): 27th March and 4rd April - spaces available
- The part-time researcher: 30th March - spaces available
- Communicating your research to the media - limited spaces available
- Understanding publication metrics: 5th April (10.00 - 12.00) - limited spaces available
- First steps in public engagement with The Brilliant Club: 7th April - spaces available
- Practical tips to improve your academic writing: 10th April - spaces available
- Editing your thesis: 10th April - spaces available
- Write Club: 12th April - spaces available
Visit our webpages to book a place or add your name to a waiting list.
Research Hive Seminars 2017
The 2017 Research Hive Seminars continue in March and April:
Developing and disseminating research on social media - 23rd March, 12.00 - 14.00
This session will explore how academics can use social media to not only disseminate, but also to develop, our research.
What kinds of conversations and communities can academics build on social media, and what does this imply for the future of our research culture?
And how does this fit with the changing role of social media in society as a whole, including its potential to weaken barriers between academic and non-academic audiences, but also to create additional risks for accurate representation and civil discussion?
Dr Mark Carrigan, author of Social Media for Academics (2016), a SAGE publication that addresses both the fundamental and the practical issues at stake in these questions, joins Dr Lucy Robinson from Sussex History, in a simultaneously provocative and practical discussion.
Planning for REF 2021: How to plan and publish with REF in mind - 6th April, 12.00-14.00
The next Research Excellence Framework, the UK’s national research assessment exercise, is likely to be significantly different to previous incarnations.
The REF creates significant opportunities for institutions, research groups and individuals to showcase outstanding areas of research and of its impact. All researchers and related other relevant University staff working in UK Higher Education need to be aware of the REF, but the issue of whether, or how far, the REF should affect individual publication planning and impact-linked research activities is both controversial in principle and difficult in practice, given continuing changes to the exercise.
Two senior academic leaders, Professor Phil Ashworth from the University of Brighton and Professor Gordon Harold from Sussex, discuss how researchers can productively work in a REF environment, recognising features of the process to which they can positively contribute, and which can promote both individual and institutional interests and opportunities.