Overview of ERC 2023 submissions
There were 371 submissions for the ERC 2023 (307 paper, 40 poster and 22 Ignite Talks respectively), which were reviewed by a total of 91 reviewers. All proposals were double- or triple-peer reviewed and 319 contributions were accepted.
ERC Bursary Review process and awards
Of the 111 bursary submissions that the ERG received for the ERC2023, 29 bursary awards were made based on merit and a double-blind peer review process which include three EERA Council Members, the ERG Senior Mentor, an ERG Senior Fellow, ERG co-convenors and the ERG Link Convenor.
Expansion of ERG Mentoring opportunities
The ERG mentoring opportunities continue to be a huge success with 50+ individuals mentored this year across the three types of mentoring opportunities offered. Recognising the impact of the pandemic on emerging researchers’ opportunities to engage with development activities, the ERG continued to expand the number of mentoring opportunities available to members, specifically for reviewing ERC abstracts. The three main different mentoring opportunities are now highlighted on the EERA website, and across all of these opportunities, in 2023, 50+ emerging researchers were given the opportunity to be mentored, and all mentoring opportunities involved the virtual ‘shadowing’ of and receiving feedback on reviews by an experienced academic.
For mentoring in relation to reviewing ERC Conference proposals, the Conftool ‘meta review’ function was used to offer these opportunities, with the current ERG Senior Mentor and the previous ERG Senior Mentor supporting with mentoring inexperienced emerging researchers in learning how to review and provide high-quality feedback on submitted proposals.
In 2022-2023, three new co-convenors were brought on board, and a detailed co-convenor induction checklist is also utilised for this purpose wherein an existing and experienced co-convenor buddies up with each new colleague and talks them through the various activities and commitments related to the role. This builds upon the detailed and hugely comprehensive email that the Link Convenor sends out when an invitation is first made to an individual to join the co-convenor team.
All the ERG mentoring processes are crucial to foster a robust pipeline of academic and organisational skills and knowledge development for emerging researchers. As such, since 2018, it has been an annual practice that all emerging researchers who attend the ERG meeting are offered the opportunity to mentored as a subsequent ERC abstract reviewer. In this mentorship programme, experienced researchers will continue to mentor emerging researchers who may not have prior experience through the review process. Demand is matched by the resources available, and there is no guarantee that everyone who requests this will be given the opportunity. For ERC2023, though, thanks to the continued generous volunteering of senior academics, we have been able to meet the requests of all emerging researchers who sought to be mentored for the ERC reviews. All those emerging researchers who were mentored gave overwhelmingly positive feedback about the impact of the experience.
Emerging Researchers' Conference 2023, Glasgow
The ERC in 2023 consisted of a two-day event in-person in Glasgow which took place on Monday 21st August and Tuesday 22nd August 2023. Two network workshops (NW: 10 Teacher Education Research and NW:33 Gender and Education) took place on the Monday. A historical record is kept of all Network workshops to indicate how care is taken to ensure a variety of opportunity being offered to all EERA Networks to showcase themselves during the ERC.
Overall Feedback
Overall, participants were all very open and happy to make connections, to network and discuss work, and their experience can be summarised in this testimony from one participant: "Thank you so much for coordinating such research-based activities by EERA, it is so much meaningful for my research and study journey." (EERA Summer School 2023 participant, ERC paper presenter and ERC 2023 Bursary Award Winner).
New Incoming ERG Link Convenor
26th August 2023 marked the end of Dr Saneeya Qureshi’s tenure as ERG Link Convenor ERG LC). The new ERG LC is Dr Lisa Bugno who took over on the same day.