CALL FOR PAPERS: 1st Annual CLAS Postgraduate Symposium

CALL FOR PAPERS: 1^st Annual CLAS Postgraduate Symposium

April 27^th-28^th 2015, University of Nottingham

Confirmed Keynote: Professor Pat Thomson

This year, the CLAS postgraduate community is pleased to be hosting the 1^st Annual Postgraduate Symposium.

We invite both taught and research PGs to present their research in a friendly, informal environment and would welcome as many contributions as possible on any theme or topic, in the following suggested formats:

-          Formal papers, lasting 10-15 minutes

-          Informal research overview presentations, lasting 5-10 minutes

-          Translation, subtitling or interpreting demonstrations, readings of translations or other creative contributions

-          Offers to chair panel sessions

-          Posters

We are looking for speakers from all departments to present their research however they feel most comfortable, be that in a traditional conference format or a more informal talk, such as a translated piece followed by a commentary. We’re very open to all ideas, so please do get in touch if you feel that you have an alternative format that you might like to try.

We ask for abstracts of 200-250 words, giving details of what you would like to present, and how you would like to present it. Please be sure to include your name, degree course, and department. Please email this to classymposium@gmail.com by Friday 27^th February, 2015.

The setting will be informal and inclusive, and there will be an emphasis on discussion rather than on presentation. We hope to enable students at all stages to benefit from the knowledge and experience of colleagues, and to engage with each other’s research.

The symposium does not have an overarching theme; rather, we hope to be as inclusive as possible, and arrange the panels by research interests with the aim of creating discussions that will enhance our individual projects by sharing ideas across disciplines. The concept behind the symposium is to share our research and build networks across the different departments in the School in order to foster a livelier, more interactive postgraduate community.

We are also very pleased to announce that Professor Pat Thomson will be giving our keynote address. Professor Thomson, of the University of Nottingham’s School of Education, will be presenting a paper about postgraduate life. Her impressive academic profile (http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/education/people/patricia.thomson) is supplemented with an extremely accessible and helpful blog (http://patthomson.wordpress.com/) that provides excellent academic advice for postgraduates and early career researchers on a range of topics. In addition to her position within the School of Education, Professor Thompson is Adjunct Professor at the Free State University, South Africa, a Visiting Professor at the University of Haskoli Islands, Iceland and a Visiting Professor at Deakin University, Victoria, Australia.

We have also planned a variety of parallel workshops, which are based around key issues affecting postgraduates such as public engagement, social media networks, being an early career researcher, and careers outside of academia (all of these are yet to be confirmed, but this is to give you an indication of the nature of these workshops). We hope to see as many CLAS postgraduates as possible at the event, even those are not presenting, so look out for an opportunity to register as an attendee in due course.

Kind regards,

PG Symposium Organising Committee

Sam Wilkinson (French)	Nicola Thomas (German)	Irene Hadjiloizou (CFM)
Victoria Gerstman (CFM)	Isabel Story (SPLAS)	Olivia Hellewell (RSS)
Onur Alptekin (SPLAS)	Hongyuan Chen (CETI)	Timo Schrader (AmCan)
Coral Leather (AmCan)	Claire Burdfield (CFM)	Margarita Escobar (SPLAS)
Ya Chun Liu (Translation)