The seventh annual UNE Postgraduate conference, titled “Intersections of Knowledge”, has presented some new challenges for the organising committee in 2022.

With the event now embedded in the research culture at UNE, this year we had no option other than to include a digital participation option for presenters and audience. We have also expanded the conference participants to include contributions from our PhD, Masters, Honours and Post-doctoral Fellows. This event continues to provide candidates a valuable stage for honing presentation skills with a friendly audience, while also providing a community showcase of our excellent postgraduate research and researchers. We recognise the vital role of supervisors in encouraging and supporting their PhD, Master and Honours students to participate and again invite them to view their candidates’ presentations live on-campus as part of the audience. 

As with the 2021 conference this year’s event will be a hybrid design, including face to face and online/digital attendance. Within the hybrid format, presenters will be able to engage face to face at the Armidale UNE campus or online, from other locations in Austral and overseas. Face to face presentations will be made on the Armidale campus to a live audience made up of session presenters, their supervisors, session Chairs, guests and conference organisers. All presentations will be streamed to the virtual audience, attending the event remotely. This year’s sub-theme is The New HDR Environment, Industry and Commersialisation Challenges and Opportunities

Acknowledging that research creates new knowledge, it follows that research communication stimulates interactions that self-generate new thinking, ideas and actions within and across networks; that is, research creates “intersections of knowledge”.  The value of these intersections cannot be understated, and it is important that they extend more broadly and outside the research community.

Our postgraduate research conference provides an opportunity to:

  • prepare and present research across the university in a friendly setting;
  • hear how researchers from other disciplines are approaching their investigations and;
  • how research practices are carried out in different contexts.

Each year, Keynote and Special Sessions presenters are invited to provide unique insights into the world of research. From the Keynotes, we hope to encourage our postgraduates to identify and acknowledge the skills they are acquiring within their studies and the expanded career opportunities that their higher degree training could provide them. The Special sessions are focused on alerting candidates to support and training available to them through UNE.

The conference will be opened by our keynote speaker, Professor Leo Goedegebuure Professorial Fellow Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education.  His background is in higher education policy and management and started in The Netherlands at the Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS) at the University of Twente.

On the 24th we have another, not to be missed Keynote, Llewellyn Owens BE Mech (UQ), MBM (Monash) Managing Director / Founder Vesi Water with Adjunct Professor Trevor Brown , Dr Lou Conway Director of the UNE SMART Region Incubator (UNE SRI) on Water from Air: Creating Innovation Collaborations That Can Change Reality This session will provide a unique insight into what we learnt through the collaborations and how to do it better next time, in the spirit of true collaboration that pushes the boundaries for climate change.

Interested in attending the conference?  Everyone attending the conference needs to register as soon as possible, including guests who do not wish to present.

Details can be viewed on the Postgrad Conference Webpage at https://www.une.edu.au/research/hdr/postgraduate-conference or email the committee at unepgconference@une.edu.au or via phone 02 6773 3715.