Owen Greenwood and Tobin O’Connor from the Doctoral Student Conference Committee 2024 share their experiences below.
There is still time to sign up to join the 2025 committee! Please email doctoralconference@mmu.ac.uk to find out more and register your interest.
Owen Greenwood, Event Manager
I decided to join the Doctoral Student Conference committee as I was relatively new to Manchester Metropolitan University and thought it would be a good way to meet and work with researchers from other disciplines as well as get to grips with the university. As Event Manager I oversaw the logistics of the conference, from venue and catering to organising event registration. I also took on remote access AV support to enable distance learning researchers to attend. During my time on the committee, I got to know not only the Student Union staff, where we hosted the event, but also many of the Doctoral College team, who were fantastic and made organising the event much more straightforward through their support. Assisting on the committee gave me experience in event management, honing my organisational skills and giving me an understanding of the challenges of creating an inclusive event for a diverse audience for science communication. By the end of it I learnt how to prioritise for a day-long event with a packed timetable, as well as problem solving on the fly in a fast-paced environment.
Tobin O’Connor, Volunteer Manager
As the Volunteer Manager, it was my responsibility to recruit and lead the volunteering team for the conference, with this volunteering team including both doctoral students and academic members of staff. When I put myself forward to become the Volunteer Manager, there were numerous tasks that I expected to do, such as recruiting the volunteers through an application form and an informative briefing pack, creatively coming up with a timetable for volunteers and managing the team on the day of the conference. However, there was also a wide range of unexpected tasks, such as having to draw up marking criteria’s for the academic judges, deciding on the spot how to do a tiebreaker when a number of presentations all drew and editing that volunteer timetable 4/5 times in order to make changing circumstances work, though perhaps I should have expected that last one! Aside from the role of Volunteer Manager itself, there was plenty to contribute as part of the wider Committee, in regular meetings where the conference was slowly but surely organised and put together. The role was certainly a varied one, but as someone who enjoys having a range of various tasks to do, this was certainly the role for me!
Of course, whilst this role did give me valuable experience in further developing a wide range of valuable skills, whether organisation, time management, leadership, teamwork etc, the greatest benefit of not only taking up this specific role but being on the Conference Committee more broadly, was the opportunity to network and work collaboratively. Undertaking a PhD can be quite an isolating experience at times, and so the opportunity to work alongside other doctoral students throughout an academic year, especially ones from other disciplines who I may have not ordinarily come to interact with, was one that I came to particularly appreciate. Furthermore, as someone who wishes to pursue a career in academia beyond the PhD, the opportunity to be involved in the organisation of an academic event was invaluable experience.
