The value of a Student and Early Career Researcher Conference

Blog by Emma Palmer Foster

Since joining the Regional Studies Association (RSA) at the start of my PhD programme, I’ve found the organisation to be approachable, a publisher of relevant and interesting material and provider of useful webinars. That meant the decision to attend its Student and ECR conference in September in Cambridge was an easy one to make for lots of reasons, not least the opportunity to present my research and progress to an audience of peers. At least I thought they were my peers – as a mature part-time PhD student I was mistaken for a professor at least once!

Describing itself as the ‘global community for regional and urban research, development and policy’, it’s clear that disciplines and topics covered by the RSA are many and varied. The presentations at the conference reflected this variety in a really interesting way, and this was one of the joys of the meeting. Papers presented covered arts-based approaches to evaluating impact and capturing the experiences of younger people(1), a quantitative study of commercial property stakeholder attitudes to sustainable energy practices(2), a discussion of economic growth theories when applied to regional growth(3)… and much more.

Trying to listen to every presentation with an open mind, I found ideas of interest in practically all sessions, regardless of their apparent (ir)relevance to my own work on bioscience park stakeholders and regional innovation systems(4). As a part-time PhD student working as a practitioner in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector, there’s always a concern that I’m not thinking academically often enough, and the presentations gave me a great chance to exercise my academic thinking muscles.

The conference, which was organised by Anglia Ruskin University and the 英国剑桥大学 , promised valuable connections and it certainly delivered on that for me. A researcher in the audience for my presentation had faced a similar challenge to my attempt to understand where regional innovation systems are located in practice/reality. She gave me some great insights and I’m already reading her PhD thesis. Two other advantages of presenting at the conference were that it made me reflect on and draw conclusions from my work to date and it was an excellent test of the ability to explain my research clearly enough to keep the audience engaged and interested. Enthusiastic presentation always helps in this regard! The audience asked me some very valuable questions which are helping me clarify the outcomes I hope to see in my research.

It was fun too to take part in an RSA Student and Early Career Researcher Research Group, convened in order for the organisation to understand how it can better help researchers in the field progress. PhD students and early career researchers are a diverse bunch and hopefully my perspective was useful. It was great to be able to help someone generate data! The session was also provided some helpful insights into how the RSA can assist researchers with disseminating their findings – for example via blogs and mentoring on publications.

This RSA Student and Early Career Researcher conference was a very valuable experience and I’ll certainly be attending next year.

1 Arts-based Approaches to Evaluating Impact: Youth Perspectives on Smart Local Energy Systems, A Case Study. Charlie Ingram (Coventry University C-DaRE) - United Kingdom Accessed September 29 2024

2 Diverse Perspectives and Attitudes of Stakeholders in the Commercial Building Sector for the Adoption of Sustainable Energy Practices. Linjing Zhai (University of Chichester) Accessed September 29 2024

3 Regional Economic Growth and Post-Keynesian Economics: Unfit for Purpose? Alexandre Gomes (Anglia Ruskin University) - United Kingdom Accessed September 29 2024

4 Understanding how heterogenous bioscience park stakeholders influence regional innovation systems. Emma Palmer Foster (Birkbeck University of London) - United Kingdom Accessed September 29 2024