Research-Teaching Practice in Wales 2011 Conference

The Higher Education Academy Wales Research-Teaching Nexus Action Set and the University of Wales Alliance Learning and Teaching Thematic Group are co-organising this event to be held at Gregynog Hall, near Newtown (Powys) on 13th and 14th September 2011. The Conference will be of interest to both university staff and students, and follows on from the successful meeting that took place at Gregynog in 2009 (photo below).

The provisional title of the event is “Research-Teaching Practice in Wales” and the event will be split into two themes:

1. Practice in Research-Informed Teaching;
2. Student Engagement with Research in the Curriculum.

The likely cost per person will be around £100 for staff and £50 for students, which includes full-board and registration. Places are limited but at least two places will be reserved for each Welsh HEI up until a deadline (yet to be set). A call for papers and further details will be issued in May.

 Please express an interest as soon as is convenient. Please reply to Professor Simon Haslett (s.haslett@wales.ac.uk), and please feel free to circulate this information widely amongst interested colleagues.

Welsh Students at the British Conference of Undergraduate Conference

I attended Day 1 of the inaugural British Conference of Undergraduate Research today at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston. I gave the opening keynote and then saw some excellent student research posters over lunch.

These included a poster by Daniel Jackson (a student from Cardiff University) on his dissertation an investigation into the reliability of tidal turbines' for sustainable electricity generation (photo below).

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to stay for the other students presentations on the programme from Welsh institutions:

• James Gardiner (Swansea Uni) The affect climate change on the Blaencwm landslide.
• Nicky Evans (Swansea Uni) N170 activity in prosopagnosia and normals; an EEG study.
• Wai Leung Sze (Swansea Uni) Safety in the railway domain.
• James Walker (Swansea Uni) Visualisation of animal tracking data.
• Desislava Terziyska (Cardiff Uni) "Two plastic surgeries for the price of one" or what makes up the 'perfect' Bulgarian.
• Liam Betsworth (Swansea Uni) Audacious: a location based application for the iPhone that makes use of a virtual audio space.
• Jordan Scoberg-Evans (Swansea Uni) Prosopagnosia in the perceptual "face/house" decision making paradigm.
• Jessica Esa (Swansea Metropolitan Uni) Religion in classic fairy tales.
• Jessica Lawson Hughes (Swansea Metropolitan Uni) Representations of women in modernist literature.

Well done to them all and their tutors for encouraging them to submit papers.

British Conference of Undergraduate Research Programme

I've seen an advanced copy of the BCUR Programme for 19-20th April at UCLAN. The good news is that eight students from Welsh Higher Education Institutions are presenting at the conference, the disappointing news is that these eight students are from just two universities! So well done to Cardiff University and Swansea University for raising awareness and encouraging students to attend. It would be good to see an increase in institutions sending students for BCUR 2012.