An “Absolutely Incredible” Range of Presentations and Posters Delivered at the 2023 South West Undergraduate Conference (SWUC)!

The SWUC 2023 organising committee (L-R) Lana Dale, Elaine Gao, and Lauren Newsome

School of Psychological Science students (L-R) Marina Antoniadou, Katherine Towndrow, and Harriet Sabey with their posters at SWUC 2023.

The SWUC 2023 prize winners with the organising committee, Dr Angela Carter, Professor Laura Mickes and Professor Jeremy Tavaré.

28 April 2023

On Saturday 22 April 2023, the School of Psychological Science welcomed over 120 delegates from across the south west of England for the South West Undergraduate Conference (SWUC). This annual event, which is sponsored by the British Psychological Society (BPS), is an opportunity for final year undergraduate psychology students to share and showcase their dissertation research in an authentic conference context.

This year, SWUC was organised by Elaine (Yiyang) Gao, Lauren Newsome, and Lana Dale as their Psychology MSci apprenticeship project, which was supervised by Dr Peter Allen. The organising committee spent several months planning the conference, which they began with a series of focus groups with student representatives from all seven participating universities (University of Bristol, UWE, University of Bath, Bath Spa University, University of Exeter, University of Plymouth, and Plymouth Marjon University). For the first time ever, these representatives included Psychology in Education students from the University of Bristol’s School of Education. Throughout planning, the organising committee were supported by a steering committee and a team of BPS student ambassadors. The steering committee and ambassadors also served as peer reviewers for over 80 abstracts. Edoardo Luigi Altieri, an ambassador from Bath Spa University, described this as an important “rite of passage”, in which he was able to put his “knowledge in reading and writing research papers to very good use”.

At the conference, Edoardo was joined by four other BPS student ambassadors, Sarah Puthuparackat (University of Bristol), Sharlene Loh (University of Bristol), Youjin Jeong (University of Exeter), and Gemma Adams (Plymouth Marjon University), who shared responsibility for chairing the presentation sessions, coordinating the poster sessions, and assisting with registration and refreshments throughout the day. This combined effort resulted in what Professor Peter Etchells from Bath Spa University described as, “a professional and high calibre conference”. He went on to say, “it was a joy to be back in Bristol, and I thought the day went extremely well … the organising team are a credit to your school”.

The conference commenced with a welcome from the School Education Director, Dr Chris Kent, who offered some tongue-in-cheek advice:

“I'll give those who are presenting the same advice that I give my PhD students before they go into their vivas: ‘you’ve done all the hard work, don’t mess it up now!’ Wait, no! Enjoy yourself; have a great day; reflect on the hard work that has gone in to today; but, also, just enjoy the moment. You’ve done a great job!”

The welcome was followed by parallel presentation and poster sessions. On these, BPS student ambassador Gemma Adams remarked, “listening to the presentations and viewing the posters was an excellent reminder of how varied psychology is. It's great that students can showcase their research and speak so passionately about it.” Alex Monson, a final year Psychology BSc student at the University of Bristol and presenter at the conference, echoed these sentiments, saying, “it’s been really rewarding to learn about what other people have been doing. It’s been a really nice way to celebrate all the hard work we’ve done. Not just in this year, but throughout the entire undergraduate degree.”

The day also included a very popular careers panel, hosted by Lana Dale. The panellists were Annika Flynn (final year PhD student at the University of Bristol), Fintan Smith (researcher at YouGov, and recent University of Bristol graduate), Rachel Caddick (third year trainee clinical psychologist at the University of Bath), Molly Kelly Lewis (Partnerships and Learning Officer at the People’s Health Trust, and University of Exeter graduate), and Ellie Macey (consultant at the Institute of Public Care at Oxford Brookes University, and University of Exeter graduate). The panellists answered a wide range of career focused questions from conference delegates and then continued many of these conversations into the conference lunch hour. Later in the day, Professor Laura Mickes continued the careers theme in her keynote by reflecting on the pathways that led to her current professorship at the University of Bristol. Laura followed this with a fascinating talk titled, Can Eyewitness Memory be Exonerated? The talk generated so many questions from the audience that the organising committee started to worry that some delegates might miss their trains home!

The day concluded with Professor Jeremy Tavaré, Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Bristol, and Dr Angela Carter, Chair of the BPS South West Branch, reflecting on the day’s events prior announcing the prize winners. Jeremy described the quality of the presentations, posters, and audience engagement as “absolutely incredible”. Angela agreed and particularly enjoyed how the conference was “student led and student ran”. She commended the “absolutely brilliant” organisation by Elaine, Lauren, and Lana.

The overall SWUC 2023 prize was awarded, by popular vote, to Pear Punsri from the University of Bath. Reflecting on her success, Pear said:

“To overcome my fear of public speaking, I decided to take a step out of my comfort zone, and I am very glad I did it. Presenting at SWUC has given me invaluable experience. I had an amazing time connecting with other psychology students, and hearing about interesting projects from other universities! So take that first step towards your fears, you never know what opportunities and experiences may come your way!”

The poster and presentation prizes were awarded to Jess Hays (Bath Spa University) and Shambhavi Shivam (University of Exeter) respectively, with honourable mentions for Annelore Ryan (University of Exeter), Alexandria Scott-Warren (Bath Spa University), Kate Blackburn (University of Bath), and Aanya Muranjan (University of Bath). Finally, there were three prizes for correctly answering the highest number of questions about the content of the posters. These were awarded to Charlotte D’arcy (University of Plymouth), Maja Kazmierczak (University of Exeter), and Sanskriti Aggarwal (University of Exeter).

In closing the conference, Lauren Newsome thanked the many people involved in making the day a success. These included, particularly, Ian Harrison (University of Bristol) and Sarah Chestnutt (BPS South West Branch) for all the behind the scenes advising and organising they did.

Evaluation data collected after the conference indicated that delegates found the day to be interesting (4.5/5), valuable (4.5/5), enjoyable (4.2/5), and much less stressful than some had anticipated (0.8/5)! 100% of respondents said that they would recommend future SWUC conferences to friends and/or other students. So, here’s looking forward to SWUC 2024!