The RGS Scholarship Conference Week 2021

Recorded lectures will be available to watch on Monday 22 March in preparation for discussion on Wednesday 24 March

The live event can be viewed via: bit.ly/3tI9lP9

Questions will be accepted via: bit.ly/38X9XZs 

Lord Popat - A Personal Interview on Race and Politics by Omeet Atara and Tom Welsh: Lord Popat is a former Minister of the Crown for Business and Transport and is currently the Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy to Rwanda, Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo. Ennobled to the House of Lords in July 2010, Lord Popat has been a lifelong Conservative serving five Conservative Prime Minister’s from Margaret Thatcher to Boris Johnson, helping to bridge the gap between the Party and ethnic minorities. Last year, Lord Popat published his award winning book A British Subject with a foreword from David Cameron which outlines his journey from Uganda – where he was expelled by the brutal dictator Idi Amin – through to establishing himself in business and politics.

Mr Thorne - New Words from a Very Long Year - the language of 2020 and beyond: Mr Thorne, former Director of the Language Centre, now Language Consultant at King’s College London, records and writes about contemporary slang, the language of subcultures, particularly of young people - and other varieties of new language including political jargon, media catchphrases and ‘lifestyle’ terms. He has written, broadcast and lectured on these topics extensively in the UK and worldwide, most recently recording and analysing the language of Brexit and on the subject of Populism and the Pandemic, also commenting in the media on racist language and on the misuse of language by politicians and celebrities. Mr Thorne is the compiler of Bloomsbury’s Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, and wrote The 100 Words That Make Us English, a collection of cultural keywords, a Dictionary of Popular Culture. Fads, Fashions & Cults, and Shoot the Puppy: A Survival Guide to the Curious Jargon of Modern Life, as well as cultural histories and textbooks.

Professor Girolami - Digital Twins: Professor Girolami is a Computational Statistician having ten years experience as a Chartered Engineer within IBM. In March 2019 he was elected to the Sir Kirby Laing Professorship of Civil Engineering (1965) within the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge where he also holds the Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair in Data Centric Engineering. Professor Girolami is a fellow of Christ’s College Cambridge. Prior to joining the University of Cambridge Professor Girolami held the Chair of Statistics in the Department of Mathematics at Imperial College London and is one of the original founding Executive Directors of the Alan Turing Institute the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence. Professor Girolami is an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, he was an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow (2007-2012), an EPSRC Established Career Research Fellow (2012-2018), and a recipient of a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.

Professor Nitschke - Incarceration Changes Behaviour, for Molecules Too: Professor Nitschke received his bachelor’s degree from Williams College (USA) in 1995 and his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley in 2001 under the supervision of the Professor of Chemistry, T Don Tilley. He then undertook postdoctoral studies with Jean-Marie Lehn in Strasbourg under the auspices of a US NSF fellowship, and in 2003 he started his independent research career as a Maître-assistant (fixed-term group leader) in the Organic Chemistry Department of the University of Geneva. In 2007 he was appointed University Lecturer at Cambridge, where he now holds a Professorship. His research programme investigates the self-assembly of complex, functional structures from simple molecular precursors and metal ions.

Dr Mani - New Normal for Global Catastrophic Risk?: Dr Mani is a Research Associate in communication and outreach of global catastrophic risk (GCR) at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge. Lara works towards building an empirical evidence base for a variety of outreach and communication techniques adopted to present global risk. She also works to understand how an improved knowledge of global risk can translate to action. Lara has an undergraduate degree in Geological Hazards from the University of Portsmouth and a PhD in Geo-communications from the University of Plymouth. Her PhD research aimed to establish the effectiveness of using video game technology in volcanic hazard education and communication practices in the Eastern Caribbean.

Dr Exadaktylos - Europe in flux: post-Brexit, post-Covid-19 and post-Trump: Dr Exadaktylos is a Reader in European Politics at the Department of Politics at the University of Surrey. He is a visiting professor at the College of Europe (Natolin) and the University of Agder (Norway). His research covers European Union public policy, EU foreign policy, Greek politics, the politics of austerity and emotions in politics. Recently his research extended into areas of pathways to political engagement in light of Brexit as well as public policy responses in light of the Covid pandemic. He is the co-editor of the Journal of Common Market Studies Annual Review and member of the Centre for Britain and Europe and the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellent at Surrey. He has a BA in International Relations (Tufts), MSc in European Political Economy (LSE) and a PhD in Politics (Exeter).

15 to 20 minutes per talk