Category: Competition

BORDER CROSSINGS: Want to turn your research into a documentary film? (Deadline May 23, 2018)

Posted by on in Awards and Prizes, Competition, Dissemination, Training Event, Upcoming opportunities2 Comments

Filmmakers, are you ready for an academic project to inspire your storytelling? Would you like to collaborate with some of the world’s leading scholars? Could your film skills make some brilliant academic research accessible to wider audiences?

Academics, do you have a research story that could be turned into a documentary film project? Would you like to collaborate with a professional filmmaker with an established track record? Do you want to share your research with a wide public audience?

To celebrate our new Creative Documentary by Practice MFA (to be led by Sophie Fiennes, Kim Longinotto and Riete Oord), Open City Documentary Festival are relaunching their Border Crossings initiative with a £5,000 development fund for filmmakers collaborating with academics who have a research story in search of an author. A runner’s up prize of £2,500 will also be awarded.

Taking place as part of UCL’s Festival of Culture, this is an exciting ‘speed-dating’ initiative aiming to build partnerships, to create opportunities for research and knowledge to be translated into insightful and engaging documentary and to allow filmmakers access to table-turning research stories.

The deadline for applications is midnight on 23rd May 2018

There are places for 10 filmmakers and 10 researchers. During the course of the two hour session, researchers and filmmakers will meet to discuss their work and will form teams following this meeting. These teams will be eligible to apply for the £5,000 development fund. All applicants will pitch their projects to a panel of expert judges during Open City Documentary Festival 2018 (4th – 9th September). The award will go to the most exciting and viable project pitched.

FURTHER INFO HERE

To apply for a place at the Border Crossings event on the 7th of June, please fill in the below form

Academics – APPLY

Filmmakers – APPLY

Elsevier Researchers’ Choice Communication Award – nominate your peers by May 17th, 2018!

Posted by on in Awards and Prizes, Competition, Dissemination, good practice, Upcoming opportunities1 Comment

“Science is not finished until it’s communicated”

Just before Easter Elsevier launched the Researchers’ Choice Communication Award RCCA #RCCA2018. They’d be delighted if you would encourage your faculty departments and your student groups to nominate their outstanding early career researchers and peers via Mendeley, the social network for scientists. There are several ways you can do this:

  • Share this Mendeley blog post on your own channels
  • Circulate or print-out the attached poster and display around campus
  • Leave copies of the flyer in your library or other student study areas

You can also follow Elsevier on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn for the latest updates and more shareable content.

The winner, chosen by their judging panel, will be announced at the awards ceremony in the presence of UK research leaders and the CEO of Elsevier on 4th October at the Royal Society in London. Chairman of the ceremony is President and Vice-Chancellor of Cardiff University and Fulbright Commissioner, Professor Colin Riordan.

Nominating a researcher for the RCCA – How does it work?

  • Nominations open on Wednesday 28th March 2018
  • Post the nomination directly to the dedicated Mendeley group
  • Those new to Mendeley will either need to sign up for a free account or email nominations to ecrawards@kaizo.co.uk
  • You cannot nominate yourself
  • Include the following information as part of the nomination:
    • Name
    • Age
    • Institution
    • Summary of nomination (250 words max)
    • Links to evidence of good work (e.g. research, speeches, blog posts, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) Only content clearly listed as part of the nomination will be used for final review
  • Nominations will be accepted until Thursday 17th May 2018

The winner will be announced at this year’s Awards ceremony at the Royal Society in London on 4th October 2018.

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PERCAT Postdoctoral Excellence Awards 2017 – Public Engagement category

Posted by on in Awards and Prizes, Biomedical Sciences, Competition, Upcoming opportunities

PERCAT are very pleased to announce the first round of the PERCAT Postdoctoral Excellence Awards 2017.  The PEA awards are for outstanding Postdoctoral/Early Career Researchers who have made excellent achievements in the following areas:

  • Public Engagement
  • Academic/Science Citizenship
  • Mentoring
  • Teaching
  • PERCAT Postdoctoral Champion of the Year

You will be able to self-nominate or nominate Postdoctoral/Early Career Researchers from within the College of Medical and Dental Sciences.   PhD students and technical staff will not be eligible to apply.  The deadline for submission of applications is Wednesday 31 May and the winners will be announced and presented with prizes of £200 per award at the forthcoming PERCAT Strategy Day to be held on Wednesday 28 June.  Further details, along with the nomination form and guidelines will be circulated next week.

Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining: Young Persons Lecture Competition

Posted by on in Awards and Prizes, Competition, Upcoming opportunities

There is a lecture competition on Thursday 25th February, 2016 where a 15 minute lecture on a materials, mining, minerals, packaging, clay technology or wood science related subject will win you £50, with the heat winner receiving £100, and the final in Brazil with a prize of £1000.  Students from Met & Mat, Chemical Engineering, EESE, Mech Eng, Nuclear Science and Geoscience are eligible.

If anyone would like to get involved, initially please contact Jo Eagles on j.eagles@bham.ac.uk

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Storytelling Researcher Video Competition: Winners announced

Posted by on in Awards and Prizes, Competition, good practice

A massive thank you to every one who submitted a video into our Storytelling Researcher Video Competition. PERC were extremely impressed the quality of the videos submitted, as well as the imaginative techniques and ideas used. Watch all the videos below.

The winners were announced today at our ‘Myth-busting the barriers to public engagement with research’ event on Dec 11th, 2015:
3rd place (£50 each): Punam Mistry and Elizabeth Randall
2nd Place (£100): Nina Vyas

1st Place (£200):  Joe Tickle

Huge congratulations to the winners, a huge amount of effort and attention to detail went into these videos.
FIRST PLACE
SECOND PLACE
THIRD PLACE (2 WINNERS)

 

ALL OTHER VIDEOS:

Thanks to the hard word from all our other entrants too! Even if you didn’t win, we want to emphasize again how much we appreciate your efforts.

Read More “Storytelling Researcher Video Competition: Winners announced”

Win a B.I.G bursary & 1 year membership (Deadline Dec 18th)

Posted by on in Awards and Prizes, Competition, Funding, Thinktank, Training Event, Upcoming opportunities

BIG is delighted to able to offer 10 bursaries to attend this year’s Little Event on Wednesday 13th January in Birmingham.

Each bursary worth £100 covers an annual BIG membership, registration fees for the Little Event and £25 towards travel expenses. 

The Little Event is for people who are relatively new to STEM communication, whether they work in a science centre or museum, volunteer for a festival, are involved in university outreach, or do anything else to engage people with sciences. It’s a lot like the BIG Event, but a bit smaller, and all crammed into one busy day. There will be several sessions, each focusing on developing a different skill, delivered by experienced science communicators following our usual hands-on approach.

But of course it isn’t just about the sessions, it’s the people you meet there too. The Little Event presents a great opportunity to meet people from across the UK working in similar roles and sharing similar experiences. The programme for the day will include sessions on Learning & evaluation, Interacting with the public, Managing your engagement project, Presenting and careers. 

If you wish to apply for one of the 10 free places, applying is simple.  Just email admin@big.uk.com by noon on Friday 18th December with the subject line “Bursary application Little Event” to tell us in no more than 200 words why you would like the opportunity to come to the Little Event and how you think it will benefit your personal and professional development. If you have already registered for the Event you can still apply for the bursary and we will refund your registration if you are successful.

Successful applicants will be notified by 23rd December by email.

For more information or to book click here 

Sarah Vining, Administrator

 admin@big.uk.com

Deadline approaching: Storytelling Researcher Video Competition (Nov 30th, noon)

Posted by on in Awards and Prizes, Competition

A reminder that our ‘Storytelling Researcher’ video competition closes on Nov 30th at noon.

 

Only University of Birmingham researchers and research postgraduates are eligible to enter.

Details of competition

PERC want to celebrate and showcase the best of our research in the most creative and exciting ways possible. We are therefore offering 3 prizes for the best 5 minute videos based on Birmingham research aimed at a general audience. 1st place wins £200, 2nd place wins £100 and 3rd place wins £50. We welcome creative videos from senior staff as well as post-graduate and post-doctoral researchers, whether individually or representing wider groups. The video can either be in the form of a presentation, interview, exercise, activity, role-play, cartoon or in any way that you feel conveys your research most effectively.

That won’t be the end of the journey for great content, whether you’re a prize winner or not – we hope to screen these videos to the public at festival events, on new areas of our website and any other innovative ways we can find to showcase your research excellence and creative efforts.

Professor Alice Roberts (the University’s very own Professor of Public Engagement with Science) will present the top 3 videos at the annual UoB Public Engagement with Research Event on Dec 11th, 2015.

How to enter?

For full details, rules & entry form contact PER Officer Caroline Gillett:c.d.t.gillett@bham.ac.uk.

The preferred file types are mov, avi, wmv, flv, mpg, mp4, wav and wma.

 

BBSRC-LEAF Science Activity Competition

Posted by on in Competition, Funding

BBSRC researchers are invited to design and produce engaging farm-related bioscience activities for use by farmers and visiting scientists at LEAF’s Open Farm Sunday on 5 June 2016.

Read article HERE

Open Farm Sunday, managed by LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming), is the farming industry’s annual open day where the public can find out how their food is produced and the work farmers do to manage the countryside. Since 2006, over 1000 farmers across the UK have opened their gates thanks to LEAF, welcoming over 1.5M people onto their farms.

BBSRC is making £17,000 available to develop up to 10 agricultural science activities that inspire and educate people about the science behind farming and food production; highlighting the importance of farming in the context of food security.

The resources will be available for farmers and visiting researchers at Open Farm Sunday on 5 June 2016, and may also be used as curriculum targeted school resources. Activities must be on topic, understandable and easy for farmers to implement on their land.

The closing date for applications is 6 December 2015.

For more information, and details on how to apply visit: www.bbsrc.ac.uk/funding/opportunities/2015/leaf-open-farm-sunday-call-science-activity-resources/

For more information on LEAF’s Open Farm Sunday visit: www.farmsunday.org

 

Storytelling Researcher Video Competition

Posted by on in Awards and Prizes, Competition, Upcoming opportunities1 Comment

The Public Engagement with Research Committee (PERC) invites UoB researchers and PGRs to enter our ‘Storytelling Researcher’ video competition. This is the second time PERC has run a research video competition, but this year we have a great opportunity for entrants to get valuable training via the free MOOC course on Digital Storytelling: Filmmaking for the Web available here: Digital Storytelling for the Web MOOC

The free online course starts on Sept 28th and runs for 4 weeks. Please note, you do not need to have signed on to the MOOC course to submit a video entry for the competition, but the course may be a very useful resource and support tool for you. We also have useful resources from last year’s competition here: ThinkPE – How Do I Create a video?

Deadline for video submission: Monday 30th November 2015 at 12 noon.

Only University of Birmingham researchers and research postgraduates are eligible to enter.

Details of competition

PERC want to celebrate and showcase the best of our research in the most creative and exciting ways possible. We are therefore offering 3 prizes for the best 5 minute videos based on Birmingham research aimed at a general audience. 1st place wins £200, 2nd place wins £100 and 3rd place wins £50. We welcome creative videos from senior staff as well as post-graduate and post-doctoral researchers, whether individually or representing wider groups. The video can either be in the form of a presentation, interview, exercise, activity, role-play, cartoon or in any way that you feel conveys your research most effectively.

That won’t be the end of the journey for great content, whether you’re a prize winner or not – we hope to screen these videos to the public at festival events, on new areas of our website and any other innovative ways we can find to showcase your research excellence and creative efforts.

Professor Alice Roberts (the University’s very own Professor of Public Engagement with Science) will present the top 3 videos at the annual UoB Public Engagement with Research Event in December 2015. Time & Date: TBC.

 

How to enter?

For full details, rules & entry form contact PER Officer Caroline Gillett: c.d.t.gillett@bham.ac.uk.

The preferred file types are mov, avi, wmv, flv, mpg, mp4, wav and wma.