The future of CE – creating an interdisciplinary NICER ECR community

From the 14th – 16th July 2021, Early Career Researchers (ECRs) from across the NICER Programme were invited to attend a three day Summer School. The event included opportunities for networking, presenting research areas and training on research impact and communications.

Despite being held online, an innovative networking technique, known as Troika networking, encouraged attendees to meet and introduce themselves to other ECRs across the network. This networking technique involves splitting attendees into groups of three for 15 minutes, giving them each 5 minutes to introduce themselves. In each session each attendee meets two new people, allowing the group to meet and engage with several others in an online environment.

“The troikas were an excellent way of not only enabling us but actually encouraging us to network and get to know one another. It not only helped me form a picture of what is everyone researching in the NICER Programme but also helped me to start picturing potential future networks or collaborations.” Says Dr Katie Lamb a PostDoctoral researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Circular Chemical Economy.

To further support this networking, attendees were encouraged to draw links between themselves on a virtual white board creating a visual network.

Following a day of presentations from the attending ECRs introducing their work to their peers, NICER Programme colleagues and invited industrial partners, attendees took part in a Storytelling Workshop by Narativ. This encouraged attendees to think about how audiences listen and how to communicate their work as a ‘story’ to engage and inspire audiences.

“I think it’s really important for us to be able to communicate the importance of our research and the storytelling workshop was a really good experience for us to understand how to communicate complex ideas in a really simple manner.” Said Anna Mate, a PhD student at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Circular Metals.

If you want to hear more from the attendees of the Summer School, take a look at our showreel from the event below.

A key objective of the NICER Programme is to develop and support a vibrant ECR community to build capacity to implement a CE in the future. The summer school will be an annual event throughout the NICER Programme.

If you would like keep up to date with the NICER Programme ECR Community, we will be featuring 5 members in each of our quarterly newsletters, you can sign up here.