School of Law holds first unified Postgraduate Research Conference
On Friday 14 May 2021 the School of Law hosted an online conference run by Postgraduate Researchers (PGRs) looking at the work of PGRs from across three Research Centres.
The Postgraduate Research (PGR) Conference was organised by PGRs Nina Herzog, Clare James, and Courtney Leader and was a combined conference for three of the School’s research centres; Centre for Business Law and Practice, the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies and the Centre for Law and Social Justice.
The conference featured two streams with three sessions in each, which included presentations of PGR research that were also chaired by PGRs. The presentations covered a wide variety of topics and individuals at all stages of their research degrees presented their work.
The plenary session focused on 'Getting a first job post-PhD' and six recent graduates of the School’s PhD programme came back to discuss their experiences of applying for jobs in academia (Dr Sean Butcher, Dr Magali Eben, Dr Diana Grech, Dr Ashley Kilgallon, Dr Ian Marder and Dr Ilaria Zavoli). They provided advice on how to approach searching and applying for jobs, and what to expect during the application process.
Organiser Clare James told us, “It was a very rewarding event to help organise. The opportunity to meet with other PGRs to present and discuss our research with both PGRs and staff was both academically beneficial and reinforced a strong sense of community amongst the PGRs in the law school.
“I would like to thank Courtney Leader and Nina Herzog who helped with organisation and chairing, all the speakers, our other chairs, James Greenwood-Reeves and Ibukun Iyiola-Omisore and Henry Yeomans for initiating and supporting a whole school conference. Finally thanks to Amar Sandhu who organised the technology for us.”
Dr Henry Yeomans, Director of Postgraduate Research Studies, explained that “This was the first unified School of Law PGR conference encompassing work from three of the School’s research centres. Previously we have held a number of smaller, separate events and so it was wonderful to bring everyone together as a research community and provide opportunities for more social and intellectual mixing. There were some brilliant presentations and excellent discussion. There is a large volume of ambitious, innovative and hugely promising postgraduate research taking place within the School of Law right now and it was fantastic to learn more about it. Clare, Courtney and Nina did an amazing job of organising the conference. I am already looking forward to next year’s event!”.
