Written by Krystel Lee, Senior Programme Officer at the CSC who attended the event supporting our Commonwealth Rutherford Fellows.
Commonwealth Rutherford Fellows were invited to attend an event hosted by Leicester Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Leicester on 22 February 2019. The event brought together a diverse group of Rutherford Fellows to explore how interdisciplinary approaches can enhance their research agendas. The CSC had 12 bright and engaging Commonwealth Rutherford Fellows who attended and participated in the event.
Interdisciplinary research is at the heart of addressing complex global challenges and achieving impact and the event included interactive and practical sessions to give Rutherford Fellows the tools to overcome these challenges.
Visualise challenges and opportunities
The day kicked off with an interactive Masterclass led by Dr Laura Meagher who is an independent consultant in strategic change in research and higher education, specialising in the development and evaluation of innovative approaches including interdisciplinary, impact-generation and capacity-building. Participants were able to discuss and visualise challenges and opportunities to their interdisciplinary research careers and learn from each other on how they would solve these challenges.
The afternoon session was led by Professor Ross Parry, who challenged participants on how they would explore and navigate their interdisciplinary research careers. Participants were tasked with creating a landscape of challenges and mapping these obstacles.
Lively and engaging
The day ended with the very lively and engaging keynote speaker Professor Dov Stekel who focused on his experiences of how his interdisciplinary research career has helped in addressing issues of antimicrobial resistance and the One Health challenge.
The event gave Commonwealth Rutherford Fellows the opportunity to network, gain contacts and use this event as a platform to collaborate with other Rutherford Fellows from around the world. The event was also attended by the Chair of the Commission (Mr Richard Middleton) and Deputy Chair (Professor Anne Anderson) and a representative from the Department from Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) – who are the funders of the CSC Rutherford Fellowship scheme.
