Worlds Collide

WORLDS COLLIDEWORLDS COLLIDE 28 September 2016, 10am – 2pm.

 

PERC are hosting an ‘unconference’, a facilitated networking session to bring together researchers from different Colleges to encourage interdisciplinary public engagement. We will also be inviting a mix of creatives to join you.

Join us for a morning of networking at Birmingham Open Media (BOM) on September 28th between 10am-2pm. BOM is a science – tech – art collaborative hub just around the corner from New Street station. We’d like to introduce University of Birmingham researchers to this new city centre space and get you to explore what research interests you have in common with other researchers, creatives and artists from Birmingham.  The focus of the day will be on how we might be able to work together (or collide worlds!) to make public engagement with research exciting, strikingly different and effective by combining the passions, hobbies or expertise of others working in different fields. We will talk about the funding landscape for public engagement and after the event there will be an opportunity to bid for modest funding to pilot ideas with people you may have made a connection with.

Funding is available to pump-prime interdisciplinary public engagement projects involving two or more researchers/postgraduates from different Colleges and/or work in collaboration with an artist where this links explicitly to UoB research. The money should be used to pump-prime activity ahead of an application to a larger external funding scheme which should be identified as part of the Worlds Collide application process. For examples of such large scale funding opportunities: See here. Interdisciplinary public engagement proposals looking for up to £1500 in pump priming will be considered by PERC.

Refreshments will be served and you are welcome to bring existing internal/external collaborators with you, but the aim is to meet new people and uncover shared interests.

The discussions and networking will be facilitated, but there will be an opportunity at the end to network freely. If you already have an engagement idea but want further inspiration this event would also be suited to you. Those interested should email engage@contacts.bham.ac.uk with ‘Worlds Collide’ in the title of the email by September 23rd. Please send your name, school, position and up to 10 key words reflecting your interests – these can be mainly related to your research but please also include at least three key words which reflect personal hobbies/past-times/informal interests. Some example key words: ‘visual perception’, ‘energy storage’, ‘epigenetics ’, ‘nanoparticles’, ‘printmaking’, ‘ethics’, ‘music composition’, ‘biomedical implants’, ‘digital heritage’, ‘social media’, ‘policymaking’, ‘Brazilian economy’ etc.

Follow the Twitter trail via #uobworldscollide @UOBengage