University, College and School Research Student Communities

Discover events, activities and support taking place in College/School research communities at Swansea University.  

The Brilliant Club is an award-winning university access charity. They work closely with PhD and post-doctoral researchers, training them as university access professionals and placing them as tutors in schools. Here they deliver academically rigorous programmes to small groups of high potential pupils from low HE-participation backgrounds. To date, nearly 2000 researchers have worked as PhD tutors.

This year The Brilliant Club are running two programmes: The Scholars Programme and The Brilliant Tutoring Programme. Tutors are paid £500 per placement, plus an additional £100 for designing a new Scholars Programme course, and travel expenses. Read a full job specification here, and apply here. 

Successful applicants can select which terms they would like to work, on which programme, and whether they would like to deliver multiple placements. 

Swansea University works in partnership with The Brilliant Club to offer you the opportunity to join The Brilliant Club’s PhD tutor community in 2021-22. To find out more, come along to an information webinar on 26^th July at 2pm using the details below:

Please join my meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone.
https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/413837861
You can also dial in using your phone.
United Kingdom: +44 330 221 0088
Access Code: 413-837-861

In addition to earning £500 per placement, successful candidates will gain valuable teaching experience, enhance their knowledge of the UK education system and develop a programme of tutorials drawing on elements of their own research with a chance to disseminate it to a non-expert audience. As well as this, they will also join a cohort of like-minded researchers who are interested in widening access to highly-selective universities. Tutors will be supported by a training programme consisting of two full-day sessions and will accompany their pupils on a university trip.

To find out more about The Brilliant Club tutoring opportunity, please visit http://www.thebrilliantclub.org/the-brilliant-club-for-researchers/get-involved/

To apply, please find the application form at https://www.tfaforms.com/421564 

If you have any queries please do not hesitate to email us at apply@thebrilliantclub.org or greg.scannell@thebrilliantclub.org

Do you know a postgraduate research rising star or an outstanding supervisor? Celebrate their hard work through Swansea University Research and Innovation Awards 2020. Applications are open now and you can nominate yourself, a colleague or a supervisor. Click here to apply 

These are schemes that enable PhD students to spend (usually) three months working at POST. Most fellows will research, write and publish a POSTnote during their time with Parliament, but some fellows have instead been placed with a parliamentary Select Committee or Library.

For further information and to find out more visit the Parliament UK website.

Pint of Science is returning to Swansea, 11-13^th May 2020! If you are interested in speaking at one of the events or would like to help organise the event (no experience necessary), then we would love to hear from you.

Let us know which theme you think your topic would fit and we will plan the event for you!

• Beautiful Mind
• Atoms to Galaxies
• Our Body
• Planet Earth
• Tech Me Out
• Our Society
• Creative Reactions

Pint of Science is an annual science festival that takes place in various cities in the UK and around the world. Researchers give an outline of their research to the public in a relaxed environment - like a pub! The events are aimed at the public who have an interest in knowing what is going on in science research, but who may not have a background in it. 

If you are interested in giving a talk, or would like to get involved in managing the events (helping to organise speakers, venues and marketing), please let us know via this Google Form (tell us which topic you are interested in as well). PhDs and postdocs are especially encouraged to get involved, particularly if you are interested in science communication, public engagement and trying your hand at event management. If you have any queries please contact Sophia Komninou or Jess Fletcher. 

Reaching Wider needs enthusiastic PGR students to develop interventions for young people based on their areas of interest/research. Reaching Wider will help you develop activities and resources to deliver engaging sessions at local schools and on campus to broaden the pupils horizons and support their learning skills. PGR students can hope to improve their own employability skills, self-development but also be a part of mission aimed at promoting opportunities to achieve equality in accessing Higher Education.  Register your interest with Sam Bowen.

The ‘Inspiring to Higher Education Conference’ is targeted at schools that meet widening access criteria. The day offers workshops across various subjects, from STEM to Medicine, Health Science, Law, and Arts, Languages and Humanities. The main aim of the event is to widen horizons and help the pupils see subjects in a new light as well as inspire and inform them about new subjects. The event is targeted at Year 9 pupils as this is a crucial time for option choices. The feedback from these events is that the pupils stated that the day had a very positive impact on them and as such more students wanted to go to a university as a result of attending and more students were prepared to work harder in their school subjects after attending the event.

Each year we look for academics to deliver sessions which would engage a Year 9 audience and this year we saw the highest number of students take part as deliverers with nine out of the twenty four deliverers being current postgraduate students (previously two students have taken part). Having students design and deliver workshops was a valuable addition to the day as they brought new and fresh ideas to the event. Students led workshops on topics which included amputation, investigating why things float and concrete poetry. All the sessions were hands on and engaging for the young people and having students supporting the delivery meant we have a wide variety of subject disciplines were on offer which we would not have been able to cater for with just academic/professional staff contributing.