Rising Stars 2018

After lots of anticipation, the winners of the sixth round of the internally-funded Rising Stars Initiative have been announced today. Awards of up to £10,000 each are being granted to assist researchers in gaining experience of managing and leading their own research projects. Although this is funding is not limited to ECRs, priority was given to ECRs.
What an amazing list of research project! Congratulations to all:
Dr Kirsten Jenkins (School of Environment and Technology) will explore the social justice challenges and values connected to smart energy systems in UK households, and the role of social justice principles in the design and implementation of such systems.
Dr Judy Price (School of Media) will test how photography, artist-moving image and sound can make visible through the overwritten histories and redrawn boundaries of the Kruger National Park in South Africa, and emphasise the post-apartheid transition of this contested landscape.
Dr Joao Inacio Silva (School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences) will work with partners in the Pharmacy School of the University of Brasilia on fungi that produce asparaginase (a therapeutic agent enzyme used in treating cancers such as lymphoblastic leukaemia).
Dr Marlon Lee Moncrieffe (School of Education) will bring together oral life-history interviews, photographs and career memorabilia to present stories of Black-British born champions in cycling, considering how these stories help with reflecting upon and advancing education in society about race equality.
Dr Konstantina Vogiatzaki (School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics) will work with two UK companies in innovative energy system solutions, and model new tools for the use of liquid gases in transportation and power generation; these ‘cool’ sustainable energy technologies have the potential to revolutionise energy sustainability.
Dr Linda Tip (School of Applied Social Sciences) will conduct scoping research to inform the development of a self-help mental health app for use among Syrian resettled refugees in the UK.
Dr Lucas Bowler (School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences) will explore differences in protein expression between strains of the bacterium Streptococcus uberis, an increasingly important cause of mastitis in dairy herds, and consider its potential utility as vaccine component.
Dr Jaime Vera (Brighton and Sussex Medical School) will explore the experiences of young people with HIV in Zambia and consider whether mobile health may address structural and individual barriers to these young people’s engagement with care services.
Dr Sarah Leaney (School of Applied Social Sciences) will compare social housing policy in Brighton and Vienna, exploring social housing tenants’ experiences of home and how these are impacted by social, economic and architectural provision of social housing.
Dr Louise Mackenzie (School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences) will test compounds in Tabernanthe iboga, a plant whose root extract increases the amount of insulin produced in rat subjects. The active component will be used in developing a new drug to improve diabetes treatment in Gabon.
Dr Nick McGlynn (School of Environment and Technology) will explore the intersection of geographies of sexualities and fatness/obesity, developing a database of UK ‘Bear’ (large-bodied gay/bisexual men) spaces and investigating how these spaces contribute to feelings of empowerment in the Bear community.
Dr Nadia Terrazzini (School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences) will explore the link between cancer and fungal infections, focusing on how the skin reacts to the fungus Candida Albicans (a common cause of infection in human skin), by analysing the expression of key inflammatory proteins by skin cells in response to Candida stimulation.
Dr Donna Ewing (School of Applied Social Sciences) will investigate the impact of sleepiness on children’s reactions to anxiety-provoking situations, testing whether sleepy children avoid these situations more or less than other children, and whether their fear of these situations reduces more or less than other children over repeated exposure.

See more: https://staff.brighton.ac.uk/the-hub/Pages/Rising-Stars-2018—2019.aspx?dm_i=1SNX,5OD5B,L7VDK5,M35KS,1

Free networking lunches

Do sign up for free networking lunches hosted by Brighton Futures. Brighton Futures are committed to building cross-disciplinary research and enterprise capacity, promoting collaborations with external partners and encouraging responses to funding calls. The five themes are: ConnectedCreativeHealthyRadical and Responsible.

Networking lunches offer informal opportunities for colleagues with similar interests from across the University of Brighton to meet each other, discuss ideas and identify possible further interdisciplinary research and enterprise collaborations. Academic Leads from the Brighton Futures themes will give an overview and are keen to find out more about your current and planned research.

Networking lunches will be followed by regular consortia forming workshops with external partners every six months from the autumn. Information on forthcoming funding calls will be available at the events, as will support and advice from relevant Knowledge Exchange Managers. Events in June will take place between 12.30 and 2.30pm.

Archives, Narratives and Histories Networking Lunch – Friday 8 June

Transport Networking Lunch Friday – Friday 29 June

A right to home: responding to the housing crisis – Symposium on Friday 8 June

A right to home: responding to the housing crisis – Friday 8 June

This symposium aims to bring together researchers of housing inequality across the UK. Supported by Radical Futures, this event explores the concept of a right to home from different perspectives, bringing together early career and established researchers, facilitating discussion and debate across disciplines of urban sociology, human geography, history, architecture and housing studies.

Rising Stars 2018-19 – Awards of up to £10,000 each

Deadline for applications: 2pm Wednesday 14th March 2018
 The University is pleased to announce the sixth round of the internally-funded Rising-Stars Initiative. Awards of up to £10,000 each are being offered to assist researchers in gaining experience of managing and leading their own research projects. Rising-Stars awards provide seed corn funding to support projects that are designed to leverage external funding, and which would make a step change to researchers’ careers.
The scheme is a university-wide initiative, and applications are invited from academic and research staff from all Schools. Rising-stars may be at any stage of their academic career, but priority will be given to researchers at the start of their career.
For more info see here

ECR Placement – digital manufacturing

As part of its activities relating to people movement and skills, Connected Everything (Industrial Systems in the Digital Age) is  launching its Early Career Researcher (ECR) Placement Scheme which is aiming to facilitate cross disciplinary research in the area of digital manufacturing.

 Deadline for submissions: 29 March 2018

For more information see here.

Publishing Workshop for Emerging Scholars

Kingston will be hosting a meeting of the international network of business & management journal editors on 23rd to 25th of May.  It is aimed at early career researchers in Business and Management to give opportunities to interact with experienced journal editors and obtain developmental feedback.  It is intended to enhance the likelihood of publishing in top-tier outlets delegates and will need to provide a paper to discuss.  Please see this page for details and contact point.

https://www.inbam-editors.org/publishing-workshop-2018/

 

Regards,

Juliet

 

Welcome

There are lots of opportunities and resources for ECRs, both internally and externally. This ECR website contains information and resources that ECRs will find useful, as well as links to other platforms that have been developed. You will find news about events and training that take place internally at the University of Brighton, tips about developing your research and your professional profile, both within the academy and beyond.

Being an ECR is exciting and full of opportunities, but it can also be challenging to navigate in highly competitive academic environments. As ECR Ambassador, I hope to strengthen the ECR Network with representation from both postdocs and PhD students, across schools, and to develop a platform to share inspiration and practical advise.

If you identify as ECR, regardless if you are part-time, full-time, with a permanent contract, or a fixed-time contract, please get in touch to let me know if you would like to be part of the ECR network.

Best wishes,
Dr Aristea Fotopoulou
ECR Ambassador 2018
@aristeaf