The Festival of Postgraduate Research, to be presented by the Graduate School for the eighth year in 2012, is where the very best of our postgraduate researchers get the chance to present themselves to the wider University, employers, and the public.

Fifty postgraduate researchers, selected competitively from the University's 1,200 strong doctoral community, will be invited to exhibit their research in as a poster presentation and asked to describe their work and its real world implications to a non-specialist audience. The Festival offers fellow researchers, the wider University, employers, the media, and the general public an opportunity to meet the next generation of innovators and cutting-edge researchers.

And for those who take part the Festival it is a unique opportunity to develop their presentation skills, network with employers and others in their field, and develop their own profile as a researcher. The Festival gives the University an opportunity to celebrate the strength of its postgraduate researcher community and is an example of its innvovative approach to developing the skills and employability of its researchers.

Cutting Edge Research

Each year the Festival highlights the breadth of cutting edge research being carried out across the University. Last year's Festival included presentations on:

• Glass Bottles as Weapons - The Engineering Story
• Interactions between Romans and Barbarians
• Monitoring Forest Drought Conditions from Space
• The Psychological Impact of Hospital Acquired Clostridium difficile Infections
• The Chemical Content of Hot White Dwarf Observations
• The Role of p53-Dependent MicroRNAs in Cancer Prevention

Who is this event for?

The Festival is open to all postgraduate researchers:

• in all Schools/Departments
• at any stage of their research degree

Only around fifty entrants are shortlisted to take part each year and expressions of interest are usually sought from March onward.

What skills will be covered?

The Festival is not a training event in the normal sense, though participants will receive coaching in designing an effective academic poster and drafting press releases.

The Festival is designed to provide participants with a unique opportunity to practice and enhance communication skills developed elsewhere. It is also a way of developing techniques associated with communicating the real world impact of research, communicating research to different audiences, and networking with other researchers and employers.

Ability to communicate effectively in both written and oral modes with a range of audiences formally and informally through a variety of different techniques and media is a component of the Researcher Development Framework and should form part of a broad-based plan for developing your skills as a researcher.

Who can I contact for further enquiries?

If you have any further enquiries about the Festival or want to take part in future Festivals, please contact the Festival Planning Team.