SWUC 2024 was hosted by the School of Psychology at the University of Plymouth. It was organised by three psychology undergraduates (Clara Douglas, Charlotte Holding, and Lauren Dennis), and their lecturer, Dr Nerissa Ho. Delegates at SWUC 2024 came from all seven South West universities (Bristol, UWE, Bath, Bath Spa, Plymouth, Plymouth Marjon, and Exeter), and collectively presented over 30 talks and nearly 50 posters. As Dr Polly Barr reflected, these covered the "full breadth of psychology", ranging from Chaeyeon Lim's experimental work on perceiving emotion in 'deepfakes', to Lana elAssaad's qualitative investigation of 'pro-ana' TikToks, Bella Jiang's correlational study on the value of participatory arts activities, Krishna Solanki's work on word memory, Holly Cavanagh's 'multiverse' analyses, and much much more!
When thinking back on the day's presentations, MaiaBourrelly remarked, "it was really inspiring to see how passionate everyone was about the 'niche' they've dedicated the past six months to".Jhuliana Castro agreed that it was a "great opportunity to see everyone's take on psychology", and Eleanor Green added, "it reminded me of why I picked psychology for my A levels". Staff were similarly effusive, with DrMaria Tsapali and Dr Justin Park praising the "enthusiasm" of the presenters and Dr Michael Smyth commending their "dedication", as well as the "warm and encouraging atmosphere" they created for fellow presenters.
Of course, the conference was not only about basking in the glow of 'job well done'. It was also about opportunities to develop skills, and gathering up last-minute inspiration for dissertations that, for students at the University of Bristol, were due in just six days’ time! On the former, Fiona Brady explained how, "the best part of today was pushing myself to do some public speaking … and developing my communication skills". On the latter, Nick Barton spoke about how seeing the presentations and posters of other students "has given me a lot of ideas for my own dissertation write-up", and that preparing his own presentation "helped me formulate and understand what I'm going to put down in writing".
Thinking forward to next year, Saud Alrashidi, a BPS student ambassador and currently in the second year of the BSc Psychology the University of Bristol, highly recommended SWUC 2025 to his peers. He said that it was "really helpful" as he begins thinking about his own dissertation project, and that he received lots of good advice from students who were in his position just 12 months ago.
In addition to the student talks and poster sessions, the day also included a careers panel and a fascinating keynote speech by Professor Jackie Andrade about "Using Psychology to Achieve your Dreams". It concluded with a prize ceremony for the best presentations and posters, as determined by both a panel of academic staff and by popular vote. There were two University of Bristol prize winners: Helena Thornton and Alexandra Papadaki. On her success, Alexandra said, "I feel really grateful, and really appreciate that people liked [my poster]". She went on to joke about how it compensated for results that were the exact opposite to what she'd hypothesised!