CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
Keynote speaker - Tom Crompton
We are very excited to announce that the keynote speech at Future Connections 2015 will be delivered by Tom Crompton. Tom is an inspiring speaker with significant experience working on sustainability issues both within and outside of academia.
Tom has worked in the third sector for more than a decade. During that time he has become increasingly frustrated by the growing gap between the scale of social and environmental challenges that confront us, and the responses that we manage to muster. He now works to explore the underlying values that influence our engagement with, and responses to, social and environmental concerns.
In addition to his work for NGOs, Tom has authored several reports and books, advised policy makers, published in popular and academic journals and has brought his message to a wider audience through public talks such as at the TEDx conference.
Knowledge exchange workshop: sustainability in action
In order to tackle the complex, global, sustainability challenges we face, researchers need to be able to engage non-academic audiences. Therefore, one aim of this year's conference is to inspire participants to increase the impact of our research by creatively and effectively communicating their research with different audiences.
To achieve this, we are organising a two-part workshop, which focuses on understanding how professionals outside academia engage with academic research. The core focus of the workshop will be to equip participants with practical tools they can use to identify and develop meaningful relationships with people who can translate your research into real world impacts. Our aim is to provide participants with not just a theoretical understanding of knowledge exchange, but also the practical skills to help you implement your ideas in your current or future research.
A more detailed description of the workshop can be found here:
Presentations of research
Future Connections exists to give PhD and early career researchers the time and space to present and share their own research with their peers.
Through this, attendees will be exposed to topics and methodologies from beyond their discipline, provided with a new context to their own expertise, and encouraged to recognise the value of interdisciplinary collaboration. On a more practical note, it is a great opportunity to practice communicating your research and receive feedback in a supportive environment, and a useful preparation for attending larger conferences.
There are two opportunities to present your research, through a presentation or a poster:
Posters
We encourage all conference participants to bring a poster to the conference - not least because there will be prizes for the best posters! There is no need to submit an abstract prior to the conference if you wish to present your research through a poster. Simply bring your poster along to the conference where we will have a dedicated space to put them up.
Presentations
If you would like to give a presentation we invite you to submit a proposal (abstract) for a presentation. We aim to give as many participants as possible the chance to present, but due to time constraints we may have to limit the number of presentations. A selection, based on the proposals received, will be made in April.
More information on presentations and submission of abstracts can be found here: