The British Conference for Undergraduate Research was a landmark in the development of undergraduate research in higher education in the UK. The conference was held at the University of Central England in Preston on the 19th – 20th April 2011 with more than one hundred and fifty delegates, most of them students. The conference gave the students the opportunity to present their own research in the context of an academic event.
The British Conference of Undergraduate Research was inspired by other conferences around the world. In particular, the National Conference of Undergraduate Research (NCUR) and the Council for Undergraduate Research( CUR), both American-based. The NCUR and CUR produce vibrant, exciting events for students to showcase their own research. For more on their work, visit their websites at www.ncurg.org and www.cur.org.
The BCUR was organised by a group of academics and students from a number of universities , led by Professor Stuart Hampton Reeves, and supported by colleagues at UCLAN.
The conference began with a keynote lecture from Professor Simon Haslett, ‘A British Tsunami’ . This was a terrific presentation, charting the process of how an idea for research , in this case a tsunami along Welsh coast , develops into a project of real national and international interest and the central feature of a television series. It gave a real sense of the excitement of the research process as well as demonstrating how the most interesting research often involves lots of different subject areas.
The University of Lincoln was well represented with a group of nine students from Psychology, Criminology and the Natural Sciences, who presented their work either as a paper or as a poster during the poster sessions. These included Samantha Cutter, Alex Keable, Lilleth Dickinson and Gemma Cotton.
The organisers of the conference are currently planning this event for next year. Watch this space.
