Written by Nabila Cruz
On 14th June 2023, Sociological Studies hosted its annual postgraduate research conference, where students in the first year of their PhD gave presentations about their research. And not only that, but it was also fully organised by students ourselves. As co-chair of the organising committee, I am here to share how we made it happen.
Let me take you back in time. It all started in December 2022, when we reluctantly organised a meeting in our old office kitchen at the Elmfield building (Sociological Studies moved to its new digs at the Wave in April 2023). A group of PGRs met and divvied up jobs between 3 smaller groups: Logistics, Programming, and Comms. We met regularly to shape the conference day and bring together our next actions over the next seven months. This required time commitment and doing a PhD means life is busy enough as it is, so it was not surprising that some of us had to excuse themselves from the team. I admire anyone who was able to say “unfortunately I cannot commit to this work”. But I am also in awe of those who gave up their time to do things such as booking catering, making posters, and reading abstracts (a very inexhaustive list of all the tasks we had!).
We decided the conference theme democratically, sending out a Google form so people could pick their favourite theme. Most people chose ‘Inequalities’ (other options included: ‘Methods’ or ‘Reflexivity’) and the Comms team came up with the catchy title of ‘Inequalities, Resistance and Change’. Presenters were not required to respond to the theme as the main purpose of the conference is to give students an opportunity to present our projects (and many of us were doing it for the first time!). But these are indeed societal concerns we expressed through our research and our brilliant presentations effortlessly fit the theme.
PGR presenters showcased the diversity of research in our cohort by sharing their work for ten minutes and then answering questions for another five. Initially, we thought we could fit presentations neatly into the four main research themes of Sociological Studies, but of course our projects often overlap themes. So the Programming team skilfully clustered abstracts into four panels: “Migration, borders and change”, “Identities, relationships and culture”, “Digital Media: inequalities and resistance” and “Health, inequalities and the lifecourse”.
With 22 presenters in a day, it was impossible not to have concurrent panels, so it was not possible to watch every PGR presentation individually. However, that was not the case with the keynote presentations. In the morning, Dr Rebecca Murray talked about decolonising research and higher education. And later in the day, Dr Stephanie Ejegi-Memeh ran an interactive session about the challenges of being an early career researcher. Not to blow our own trumpet, but we had a fantastic roster of students and staff who put in so much of time and effort to demonstrate our current (and future) impactful sociological research.
Showing great persistence, the Logistics team managed to secure in-demand rooms at the Wave. It made a big difference to be at our building, as colleagues could easily drop in to watch presentations throughout the day. A total of 43 people registered to attend and at least 34 attendees checked in the morning, which included SCS staff (both academic and professional services) and students and even PGR students from other University of Sheffield departments. In my book, this is a very good turnout, showing we have a supportive community around us.
If anyone had asked me what I thought about presenting at an academic conference seven months ago, I would have told them it would be daunting. But the experience of organizing an event like this made it much easier to understand that the more we present the more comfortable (and passionate) we become to talk about our projects. But in fact, on the actual day of the conference, I did not even have time to time to think worry about my presentation as I was focused on making sure things were in place, such as printing copies of the programme or making sure I gave people enough information in my welcome remarks. What surprised me the most is that, in the midst of organising and presenting, I actually enjoyed myself. It is exciting to hear about other people’s research and imagine a future when we will show results from the plans presented this year. We are all early career researchers, learning on the job how to make an impact in society.
Sociological Studies Research 