Tout s'est bien passé, malgré un système de visioconférence qui n'a pas permis à ceux présents dans la salle de voir les membres du jury.
C'est avec plaisir que j'annonce au monde que Jeremy DETREY, doctorant sous ma co-direction depuis Septembre 2017 a soutenu sa thèse aujourd'hui.
Tout s'est bien passé, malgré un système de visioconférence qui n'a pas permis à ceux présents dans la salle de voir les membres du jury. Published at: http://innge.net/?q=node/840, and in the BES Bulletin Spring 2016 Edited by Rachel White (INNGE) On Sunday 13th December the BES, in collaboration with both INNGE and SFE, delivered a series of workshops targeted at students and early career researchers which was supported by additional events throughout the conference. Session 1: Raising your profile This session focused on how to raise your profile in the digital and real world. Particular emphasis was placed on the importance of having a Twitter account – a MUST HAVE on the international ecological scene! Plenary questions at some meetings like the BES are only asked via the @BritishEcolSoc account, and loads of information such as job offers or workshop proposals only circulate on Twitter. It is also a great way to quickly schedule a meeting with someone. Among all other profile tools available to us scientists, ResearchGate is one of the most useful. On ResearchGate, you can find almost any ecologist in your field, his/her publications, and his/her network. Useful when you need a last-minute speaker! Session 2: Unlocking your potential This session, a regular feature of the BES Annual Meeting due to its popularity, was organised as a panel discussion and provided an opportunity for attendees to question ecologists representing a breadth of careers and career stages. Speakers were: Chris Sandom (University of Sussex, UK), Juliette Young (Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, UK), Camille Parmesan (Plymouth University, UK), and Bob O’Hara (Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F), Germany). See their key points below. Session 3: Meet the Plenaries This session aimed at helping students prepare and ask questions to three plenary speakers. It started off by having Camille Parmesan giving tips on “What would a good plenary question look like?” Starting the next day, coffee breaks became a special moment, almost intimate, between the plenary speaker of the day and the students attending. Luigi Boitani’s (University of Roma, Italy) talk on Large carnivores in Europe: science, ethics and politics, and the challenge of maintaining viable populations in human-dominated landscapes was inspiring for all students, and brought many questions linked with policies and the responses of society in the areas that he studied. Some questions were obviously on rewilding in the UK, and in Scotland in particular, where there is an on-going debate about it (especially with respect to wolf reintroduction). His opinion was that it will never be possible nor viable to rewild without having the necessary natural habitat first. Josephine Pemberton is Professor of Molecular Ecology at the University of Edinburgh, UK. She is known for her involvement in two long-term, individual-based studies of wild vertebrates: red deer on the Isle of Rum and Soay sheep on St Kilda, and for pioneering methods for estimating genetic relationships in natural populations, including genetic parentage analysis to recover pedigrees and more recently, genomic approaches. Students mostly asked questions on the difficulties and opportunities for long-term funding. Pat Monaghan (University of Glasgow, UK). She did her PhD at Durham University on the problems associated with urban gulls, which included studies at nesting colonies and of the transmission of disease. Questions to her included the position of women in science and at the science-politics interface. Workshop option 1: Public engagement A NERC funded workshop chaired by Jessica Bays (BES Engagement Officer), who highlighted that targeting a wide audience is what can really help ecology have a more central role in society. Vicky Brightman, the Head of Engagement and Interpretation at Kew Gardens provided some insights on what public engagement is and what is successful public engagement. She recommended a website that explains it very well: the National Co-ordinating Center for public engagement (NCCPE). The following pyramid of the typology of Public Engagement was also presented (Fig. 1). Fig. 1. How is successful Public Engagement achieved? (A) Pyramid of Public Engagement. At the tip: a public engagement that requires the least from the audience. It is, for example, museums. At the bottom: the public engagement requires people to be completely involved in the process. It is, for example, citizen science. It is much harder and requires more energy from everyone. (B) Main ingredients for successful public engagement. For successful public engagement, several points must be addressed (see Fig. 1B). It is important that everyone has fun and that everyone learns from each other. Vicky gave the example of the “Healing giant” at Kew Garden, which addresses both health and wellbeing issues of all ages. The message of the “Healing Giant” was to learn what plants provide us, but also to learn gardening and other skills. The workshop also allowed participants to practice their public engagement skills using the resources the BES took on the road in 2015 (@BESroadies). Some current BES Roadies were present to talk about their own experiences with sharing ecology to people at festivals. Here are examples of their regular activities: We ended the session with suggestions to improve the existing BES Roadies activities, and with some time to think about potential new activities. One such novel activity proposed was a “2-in-1” activity on plant and seed ecology, specifically: i) A “tray activity” with which people would match pictures of leaves, flowers, seeds, pollen and eventually habitats (or a choice of the above) of one plant species. This would then trigger some discussion on, for example, why they are shaped the way they are – linking to pollination mechanisms. ii) A tent activity would delve deeper into the pollination methods and shape of seeds. A suggestion was made to have a fan, which would blow different types of seeds from different species, thereby showing that seed traits and characteristics play a role in pollination and other functions. Workshop option 2: Data sharing archiving and more The data management session comprised a panel discussion from four expert speakers, Nat Cooper (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland), Bob OHara (BiK-F, Germany), Sandy Buchanan (Ohio Citizen Action, OH, USA) and Derek France (University of Chester, UK). They each spoke about the benefits of using different types of technology to manage, share and use data more effectively. Some top tips included using an app or even creating your own to help with data collection - check out Project Splatter for inspiration. The panel also spoke about the benefits of sharing data to help increase their citation count. Lastly, there are many different platforms and software available now, which can be overwhelming, so the important thing to remember is to find and use one that is relevant to you. Session 4: Managing an International Career The focus of this workshop was to answer any questions about managing a careers on the international stage. It was chaired by Iain Stott (Post doc; Chair of the BES’s Early Careers Committee). Speakers included Kyle Dexter (lecturer; University of Edinburgh, UK), Alexa Sutton (PhD student, Duke university, NC, USA, living in London, UK; representative of INNGE), Will Gosling (Associate Professor, University of Amsterdam, NL; chair of the BES’s Education, Training and Careers Committee), Sandra Varga (Post doc, Marie Curie Fellowship, University of Lincoln, UK), and Peter Baxter (Post doc, The University of Queensland, Australia). Session 5: The breadth of ecological careers
In this workshop, speakers came from various ecological backgrounds that led them to do a PhD and to use the skills they acquired throughout the years to pursue non-traditional/academic careers. Alistair Headley has eight years experience as an ecological consultant as well as over 23 years of experience of teaching in British universities; Catharine Bruce, who completed her PhD in 2013 is now the Director of NatureMetrics, a start-up company on the use of metabarcoding as a tool for informing environmental management; Regan Early is a researcher in a highly interdisciplinary environment, and has been involved in research synthesis working groups and writing large- scale grant proposals; Philippa Gullett is a project manager in conservation for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), her work revolving around testing management solutions to reverse the decline of breeding curlew populations across the UK (using a combination of habitat management and predator control). It is hard to succinctly summarise the speakers’ activities as their paths are divergent and diverse, but it was definitely inspiring to see where a career in ecology and the associated skills can bring you, sooner or later, and reassuring to know that PhD and early Post-Doctoral training can assist in building a considerable transferable skillset for any desired career pathway.Cliquez ici pour modifier.Cliquez ici pour modifier. |
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