On Thursday 23 June, the Graduate School’s annual Doctoral Research Conference will take place in the Palmer Building. This event brings together doctoral researchers from across the University and showcases the diverse range of research undertaken at Reading.

One of the most popular parts of the conference, the Three Minute Thesis Competition, this year features 12 finalists, with talks on research topics ranging from Cornish art colonies to food security. In the Palmer Foyer and ground floor rooms, there will be a display of the entries to the Research Poster Competition and the Research Image Competition.

This year, the PhD Researcher of the Year award, reflects the University’s new Research Themes. Each Research Theme has a finalist who will give a presentation at the conference:

Environment Research Theme
Joanna Baker, School of Biological Sciences

Heritage and Creativity Research Theme
Vaibhav Singh, School of Arts and Communication Design

Health Research Theme
Faith Orchard, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences

Prosperity and Resilience Research Theme
Lisa Schopohl, ICMA, Henley Business School

Food Research Theme
Luke Bell, School of Chemistry, Food and Pharmacy

The overall competition winners and the PhD Researcher of the Year will be announced at the end of the conference.

However, the Three Minute Thesis Competition, Research Image Competition and Research Poster Competition all have ‘People’s Choice’ awards, allowing conference delegates to vote for their favourite entry in each competition. The winners of these awards will be announced the following week on the Graduate School website and Facebook page.

Good luck to everyone taking part in the conference and we hope to see many of you there in the audience. You can still book a place via the RISIS web portal.

Fairbrother Lecture, Wednesday 4 May, 19.00-20.00, Henley Business School, Whiteknights

Sammie Buzzard on a field trip to the Arctic

On Wednesday 4 May, Reading PhD Researcher Sammie Buzzard (Meteorology), will deliver this year’s annual Graduate School Fairbrother Lecture. Sammie’s talk is based on her doctoral research into ice shelves in Antarctica and is entitled: ‘A slippery situation: melting ice in Antarctica’.  Before starting her PhD at Reading, Sammie undertook undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Maths at the University of Exeter. Her doctoral research uses mathematical modelling to help us better predict the speed and occurrence at which ice shelves in Antarctica will continue to melt and possibly fracture.

The lecture is free to attend, but please book places in advance via the University events page.

The Fairbrother Lecture has been established to celebrate the work undertaken by PhD researchers at the University of Reading. Named after Jack Fairbrother, who in 1929 became the first student to be awarded a PhD from the University, this Lecture will be an annual event at which a current, or recent, Reading PhD researcher will present their work to a wider audience.

Sammie’s PhD is funded by a NERC studentship.

In addition to her doctorate, Sammie has also completed a Research Council Policy Internship at the Government Office for Science and in 2015, she captained the Reading team on BBC2’s University Challenge!

Last year, Reading PhD student Karina Lickorish Quinn, won the ‘FindAPhD’ 2015 Top Prize Scholarship of £5,000. Karina is undertaking a part-time PhD in English Literature (creative writing) and is in her first year. The FindAPhD Scholarship Scheme asks applicants to submit a piece of work that is able to explain the focus of the student’s PhD and demonstrate why the student deserves the scholarship. Karina won the top prize with her short story, The Anecdotologist. You can read Karina’s winning story on the FindAPhd website, but here she explains how she came up with the idea:

“I am deeply grateful to FindAPhD.com for choosing me to win their 2015 PhD scholarship on the basis of my short story, The Anecdotologist. I wrote The Anecdotologist exclusively for the competition over the course of a few days in a bit of a frenzy of love and frustration, as is the case with most of my short story writing. The protagonist, Hernán Huaman from Huaraz, and his key dilemma came to me in what I can only give the clichéd label of ‘a flash of inspiration’.

That Hernán came to me in this way is hardly surprising as he contains a great deal of me in him. I, like Hernán, adored books and learning from a young age and decided that I absolutely and without question wanted to earn a doctorate one day. However I have found, as most of us do, that the path towards achieving my dreams has been, and continues to be, an arduous one. There are moments of elation on the mountain-top; more often there are eras of despair down in the valley. Upon reflection I think this is why I instinctively chose the Andean setting of rural Perú – my motherland – within which to explore the theme of desperately striving for a lofty goal.

At the time of writing The Anecdotologist I had already accepted my place at Reading to complete my PhD in creative writing. However I was very anxious about how I was going to afford my study. I was feeling frustrated that I could not study full-time as I could not afford to leave my day job and worried about how I would balance work, study and life. Re-reading The Anecdotologist now, I find it interesting to see how my worries about life barriers impeding my study have emerged in Hernán’s story. Of course, Hernán faces many more barriers to learning than I. Hernán is a reflection of, I suppose, my social conscience and awareness of the many hundreds of thousands – nay, millions – of students around the world who face enormous barriers to their learning goals. Having seen the socio-economic inequality not only in Perú but also in England when I worked as a school teacher in areas of socio-economic deprivation in inner-London, I am very aware of how life barriers can prevent talented young people from achieving their full potential. But I have also seen – and been inspired by – the incredible tenacity and resolve of some of these young people, my ex-students, to keep striving for their dreams. The tenacity and resolve of Hernán was, I think, in part inspired by these students whom I taught.

I am thrilled to be studying towards my PhD at Reading, where I have a brilliant and supportive supervisor, access to excellent learning resources, and a community of talented and motivated fellow students from whom to learn. I wish that every avid learner – every Hernán Huaman from Huaraz – could be as fortunate.”