Who knew the contemplation, The hours of organisation, The meetings that would over-run, The somewhat real yet second hand fun. Six months to organise our task, How hard could it really be we asked, Prioritising WaSH and early careers, We hoped there would be minimal tears With nine in the team decisions were hard But the teamwork and passion caught us off guard, Everyone’s enthusiasm kept us afloat, The friendship, the leadership, I wish to note Organising our first conference was not easy, But we succeeded, although not breezy Everything we learnt has been stored We were even decorated with an award Organisation
In June 2022, the students of the Water WISER Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) organised the 1st Water WISER Early Career Researcher (ECR) Conference. I was part of a team of nine student who took on this somewhat daunting but educational task. Crossing students from Leeds, Loughborough, and Cranfield, none of the committee had ever organised an academic conference before. With limited input from academics, we had free reign to design and implement an event specifically for ECR in the water and waste sectors. Beginning in December of 2021, roughly seven months stretched ahead of us to organise our conference. Roles and responsibilities were difficult fields to navigate in the initial days, with no clear leadership or direction. Over time, however, we slotted into areas aligned with our interests and abilities and we started to gel well as a team. We found it beneficial to break into smaller working groups for some tasks and to report back to the wider group regularly on our progress. On receipt of many high-quality abstracts from both Water WISER students and external students from national and international universities, we had the privilege of reading them but the difficult decision of prioritising those best aligned to our themes. With abstracts selected, we consolidated our program, logistics planning, and field trip. We also had three posters submitted and an industry networking event to organise. With WaSH being a multidisciplinary sector, we wanted to encourage speakers and participants from a broad range of subjects. Considering ‘WaSH’ in the first instance we decided not to have ‘WaSH’ in our conference title. This decision was made in light of many people working in water, sanitation, waste, health, and hygiene, who wouldn’t necessarily consider themselves to be working in the WaSH sphere. We chose therefore to focus on water and waste instead, striving to make it an inclusive space for everyone in these sectors, encouraging diverse conservations and knowledge exchange. The event Over the two days of the conference at Loughborough University we ran parallel speaker sessions and a poster session. Running speaker sessions on Groundwater, Climate, and Circular Economy together on day one, and Sanitation, Inequalities, and Economics on day two, we were able to include as many speakers as possible in our program. Whilst we tried to put as different themes together as possible to reduce people’s inability to attend their desired theme, this wasn’t always possible, and people inevitably missed talks and themes that they would have liked to attend. To overcome this in some sense we published the abstracts and recordings in our conference repository after the event, but it was still an area of constructive criticism received in feedback. Our sessions incorporated three speaker presentations, followed by a panel discussion / Q&A with the speakers and a room-wide discussion on a chosen topic within each theme. This worked well to involve all participants and to allow for a more natural conversation with the panellists. We also ran a networking session with industry partners and between participants. We felt a dedicated time slot of doing nothing formal was crucial for allowing people to chat casually. Our networking session allowed WSUP, The Sanitation Learning Hub, and Groundwater Relief to showcase their work and to interact with academics. We felt passionate about enabling this interaction as the divide between academia and industry can sometimes be vast. Whilst we would ideally have liked more industry partners present, it was an important interaction to facilitate, giving ECR’s an idea of future opportunities and to discuss novel research projects with those working on the ground. We were very fortunate to welcome four fantastic key note speakers: Rebecca Scott, Richard Carter, Dr. Liz Tilley, Dr. Amita Bhakta, and Dr. Andrew Longley, who spoke passionately of the changes in the WaSH sector over the years, tips and advice for ECR and lessons learnt, the peri-menopause, and working in industry and in the field. We wished to invite a diverse range of speakers, which I believe we succeeded at. The WaSH sector is packed full of diverse researchers, implementers, advocates, and organisations and we wanted to reflect some of this diversity in our event. We also ran two very well received workshops: research communication led by James McKay and inequalities in academia, led by the Water WISER academics inequalities working group (WWAIWG). Highlights of the communication workshop included drawing our research, writing a simplified story of someone else research and role-playing a conversation with a child about why you study what you do. Everybody appreciated James’ enthusiasm and artistic flare in making some of us with less creativity improve our communication skills. The second of our two workshops focussed on positionality and how our identity can impact our research and why this is important. We read two case study papers and used these alongside our personal experiences to discuss questions on researcher demographics, working in unfamiliar contexts and academic inequalities. The session was eye-opening and helped some participants to consider topics they may not have thought relevant to them before. Being intent on fostering a fun and inclusive atmosphere we organised a frisbee session on one of the evenings, which all who attended really enjoyed. Feeling that the atmosphere at conferences is often drinks orientated come the evening we felt strongly about including alternative options. Continuing with our active theme, the final day gave way to our much anticipated fieldtrip to Bradgate Park, in which Dr Andrew Longley led us on an excellent tour of the geological and palaeontological history of the local area, followed by a much needed rest at the local pub! Welcoming over 75 participants, the feedback received was exceptionally positive. The conference was praised on being an academic yet informal and safe space to share ideas, network, and to learn. It was praised on being inclusive, informative, and enjoyable. The conference committee were exhausted but thrilled and proud to have pulled off such a feat, although couldn’t have done it without the help of volunteers, the CDT management team, and Loughborough staff. We’re looking forward to handing over the baton and seeing what the next group of willing committee members will devise in future years. If, on the off chance, you are reading this as a first time WaSH / water / engineering conference organiser and would like to reach out, please do. As a committee, we would always be more than happy to share more of our experiences. Hannah
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