Bookings are now open for Wales’ largest social science conference!

Wales’ largest social science conference will take place on 25t and 26 June at the University of South Wales.

This annual conference showcases policy relevant research in Wales and attracts colleagues from academic, policy, public, private and third sectors.

The 2013 conference is the fourth annual WISERD conference, and follows on from three successful conferences, held in Cardiff, Swansea and Bangor Universities. Bringing practitioners and social scientists together, WISERD conferences have become established as one of the most important events in the social science calendar.

Themes covered at the conference this year include:

• Health and Wellbeing
• Education
• Innovation in Research Methods
• Identity
• Environment
• Labour Markets
• Policing
• Census

For details on how to book please visit the WISERD website.

Register by Friday 10 May to receive the EARLY BIRD RATE of £70!

Fancy socialising with your fellow postgrad students over a fun and informal BBQ? When the sun is out (and we’re keeping our fingers crossed that it will be!), there’s no better place to enjoy it than on the Graduate Centre balcony!

Tickets are only £6 for a build your own burger, side, and salad bar.

Get yours now from the Graduate Centre reception.

As part of his visit he will be delivering a presentation open to all staff and postgraduate students, with opportunities for questions afterwards.

The presentation will start promptly 1.45pm (until 2.45pm) and will take place in Council Chamber, Main Building.

Places will be allocated on a first come first serve basis. For more information or to register a place please contact Ruth Middleton, RACDresearchdevelopment@cf.ac.uk

Promoting Collaborative Skills Development by Engaging Local Communities.
An Interdisciplinary Symposium in Collaboration with the Fulbright Commission and Butetown History & Arts Centre.

Thursday 6 June 2013
9.00 a.m. – 4.45 p.m.
Butetown History & Arts Centre

www.bhac.org

The Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory is currently running a student-led, AHRC-funded Collaborative Skills Development Project. This project seeks to build new skills related to the impact and engagement agendas among members of the up and coming generation of PhD students and Early Career Researchers.

This upcoming symposium will enable participants to reflect on issues related to public engagement.

The theme of the symposium is “Engaged Research”,  and it will address the following questions:

• What is community engagement?
• What is the responsibility of researchers to local communities?
• By what means is authentic community engagement actualised?

Please Register by 30 May 2013. A registration form and more information is available here.

The cost of attendance including lunch and refreshments is £15.  Cardiff students should ask their home departments about institutional funding.

This interdisciplinary event brings together postgraduate researchers with an interest in topics related to buildings, towns, cities and their inhabitants. Participants will have the opportunity to explore the interconnections between the built environment and society, ecology and economy.

This free-of-charge one-day event combines presentations of papers and posters by postgraduate research students with discussions and dynamic group activities to enable exchange of information and development of new networks among researchers. Attendees will meet a wide variety of fellow researchers and share their views on the built environment, its future and the research that will inform it.
Celebrating the diversity of research, the event welcomes social and technical perspectives in fields from Archaeology to Zoology, and all ‘ologies’ in between.

Registration for presenters and delegates closes Monday 6 May.

Keynote speakers:

• Professor Emeritus Brenda Boardman, University of Oxford
• Dr Karen Parkhill, Cardiff University

For more information, please visit the forum website.

Jorge Cham with two of our PhD Students

The University Graduate College welcomed Jorge Cham, Times Higher columnist and the man behind the hugely popular PhD Comics, to Cardiff on 17 April.

Over 400 students and members of staff from across the University packed into the Julian Hodge Lecture Theatre to listen to Jorge discuss his experiences of bringing humour into the lives of stressed out PhD students, in a talk entitled ‘The Power of Procrastination’.

The talk was both entertaining and thought-provoking, with Jorge extolling the virtues of procrastination and encouraging students to let go of the guilt associated with it. Using famous procrastinators such as Albert Einstein as examples, Jorge emphasised that procrastination is not the same as laziness, and can even help students to be more productive in the long-run.

Jorge Cham has visited over 300 universities and research centres around the world, lecturing and hearing graduate students from all walks of life share their stories of academic anxiety and de-motivation.

Professor Ken Wann, Deputy Dean of the University Graduate College said: “Jorge Cham is a popular speaker who has talked in many universities worldwide.. The University Graduate College agenda includes rolling out events that will bring the University’s wider postgraduate community together and this event certainly fitted that bill.

“The talk was enthusiastically received, bringing home to postgraduate students the fact that the highs and lows or speed bumps of their PhD years are universal, being shared by the postgraduate community worldwide. There were some memorable exchanges in the Q and A session that followed.”

Deputy Dean Ken Wann with Jorge Cham

After the talk, Jorge took the opportunity to take questions from members of the audience. The evening concluded with a chance for PhD students and supervisors from across the University to network and share their experiences of postgraduate life at Cardiff.

We are extremely pleased with the success of the event, and would like to take the opportunity to thank Jorge and everyone who attended.

If you have any feedback on the event, or suggestions for future events, please contact our Communications Officer, Jadine Wringe, at wringej@cardiff.ac.uk.

To see what everyone tweeted about the event, visit our Storify page.

Thursday 25 April 2013, 13.00 -16:00
Main Building

Postgraduate Researchers play an important part in the University’s public engagement. Whether as part of big events that draw in hundreds of schoolchildren, small group sessions, or individual ventures, students are often at the heart of these activities.

This exciting University Graduate College event will showcase this activity with talks, posters and hands-on demonstrations, and is open to anyone from Cardiff University. Lunch and a wine reception will be provided.

Postgraduate Researchers can book online here.

All other bookings to be made by email to ugc@cardiff.ac.uk

Programmes can be found below:

To book a place, click here or call 029 2087 9408.

‘Once Nature becomes environmentalized, its workings are submitted to the competing environmentality designs of various ecocritics’ – Timothy W. Luke

This conference seeks to shed new light on how researchers across disciplines in the humanities and social sciences conceive the interface between human behaviour and the natural environment not simply as a matter of scientific fact but as a problem for critical thought and cultural analysis. As the ecological crisis escalates, traditional conceptions of nature as the materially secure bedrock on which our social and cultural experiences are built appear increasingly obsolete.

We invite participants to respond to this critical ecological situation in ways which explore different senses of the word ‘critical’ and offer new perspectives on the environment as a field of contested meanings and practices. As new conditions force us to rethink the boundaries between the human and the non-human, the cultural and the natural, the organic and the inorganic, we must also rethink disciplinary boundaries and how we can communicate across them. In bringing a range of researchers from different backgrounds together around the term ‘critical ecologies’, we hope to exploit these shifting territories in order to suggest an expansive and inclusive conception of ecological research as a mode of critical and cultural inquiry.

This event will generate dialogue and exchange on how we, in Timothy W. Luke’s words, ‘environmentalize’ nature according to the competing designs of our different research strategies and theoretical concerns and how these differences may suggest the contours of a common ground. Topics might include, but are by no means confined to, the following:

• Environmental ethics and ecophilosophy – are there specifically ecological ways of thinking, being, and acting?
• Climate change and the media
• Environmental literary and film studies
• Connections between critical and cultural theory and green politics
• The relations between site-specific practices (walking, observing, gardening etc.) and ecological thought
• Environmental crisis and apocalyptic narratives in popular culture
• Science studies and theories of the nature/culture divide
• Environmental aspects of space and spatiality
• Green strategies in art and design
• Eco-psychology and ecological theories of affect and emotion
• Animal studies and species extinction
• Ecological cultural criticism and the challenges of interdisciplinarity
• Political ecology and gender and queer studies

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to criticalecologies@cardiff.ac.uk no later than Tuesday 30 April 2013.

Thursday 25 April 2013, 13.00 -16:00
Main Building

Postgraduate Researchers play an important part in the University’s public engagement. Whether as part of big events that draw in hundreds of schoolchildren, small group sessions, or individual ventures, students are often at the heart of these activities.

This exciting University Graduate College event will showcase this activity with talks, posters and hands-on demonstrations, and is open to anyone from Cardiff University. Refreshments will be provided.

Postgraduate Researchers can book online here.

All other bookings to be made by email to ugc@cardiff.ac.uk.

We are also looking for students who have been involved in public engagement work in its broadest terms to present their activity at this event with 5 minute talks, posters or stalls with hands on demonstrations. If you would like to take part, please email ugc@cardiff.ac.uk.

Programmes below: