You are invited to present valuable material about an essential and sometimes daunting aspect of your PhD project, no matter what field you are studying, the requirement that your work be “an original contribution to knowledge”. We want you to think in context, so we are inviting you to write a dynamic paper about the elements of originality in your research, and consider: What drives, inspires and excites you about your research? Why is your research important? Why is it new? How might your research make a contribution to knowledge?
To help you, we are providing below fifteen different definitions of originality, outlined by Philipps and Pugh, your PhD research might:
- Set down a major piece of new information in writing for the first time;
- Continue a previously original piece of work;
- Carry out an original work designed by the supervisor;
- Provide a single original technique, observation, or result in an otherwise unoriginal but competent piece of research;
- Have many original ideas, methods and interpretations all performed by others under the direction of the postgraduate;
- Show originality in testing somebody else’s idea;
- Carry out empirical work that hasn’t been done before;
- Make a synthesis that hasn’t been made before;
- Use already known material but with a new interpretation;
- Try out something in Britain that has previously only been done abroad;
- Take a particular technique and applying it in a new area;
- Bring new evidence to bear on an old issue;
- Be cross-disciplinary and using different methodologies;
- Look at areas that people in the discipline haven’t looked at before;
- Add to knowledge in a way that hasn’t been done before.
Phillips, E.M. and Pugh, D.S. (2010) How To Get a PhD: A handbook for supervisors and their supervisors. 5th edn. Berkshire: Open University Press.
Scope: “Defining Contributions: Inspiration Driving Original Research” Conference is based on a concept designed to help you get used to the process of preparing, attending and presenting a piece of work that afterwards will be published, making its way into the academic world. The paper you send will benefit from an ISBN and will become part of NTU`s Library collection. It is also supposed to encourage you to see your research programme in a unified, coherent way: poster presentations, conference papers and presentations are all part of your unique PhD project work.
Themes and topics: This conference encourages new multi-disciplinary papers about the originality, motivations, inspirations and contributions in your research.
Submissions: This conference submission is open to the second year RPC students at Nottingham Trent University. Conference papers should be 3,000 words including references in a Harvard format. The template of the conference paper can be downloaded from the website. Prior to the conference paper you will have to send an abstract of 250 words, a list of keywords, a research profile of 100 words and an image that visualises your research. The programme will also include an exhibition, so you are highly encouraged to bring anything physical that you would like to present, be that objects, materials, photographs or posters. The first year students will also be invited to present their research posters. All submissions should be sent directly to rpcd2011@gmail.com. More detailed information is provided here.
