Brookes students showcase their research at Get Published! 2023

3 May 2023

Get Published! showcase in the Forum, John Henry Brookes Building

More than 60 students presented their research to attendees at the annual Get Published! showcase on Thursday 20 April. This event gives undergraduate and taught master’s students the opportunity to show their work to an audience of students, staff, employers and the general public. There was a wide range of projects on display, with topics varying from the gender imbalance in Formula 1 to the use of origami for visual effects.

The Student Communications team went along to speak with some of the participating students about their research and what they thought of the showcase.

Please note that some of the research discussed in this article explores themes of child sexual abuse.

More information

Noah Goldsmith, BA (Hons) Social Work - Marsha P. Johnson

Tell us about your research

I’m presenting today about Marsha P. Johnson, a Black trans activist and prominent member of the LGBT community in New York in the second half of the 20th century. She’s a great figure and you don’t see enough about her life, other than the occasional Netflix documentary. Marsha is most associated with the Stonewall riots in 1969, but there was much more to her than that, including setting up a safe house for young gay and trans people. Being able to delve deeper into Marsha’s life has been fantastic, finding out how she turned her own struggles as a young person into something positive for the community.

How have you found the event?

Showcasing my work at Get Published! as a second-year undergraduate is a great opportunity. I’ve had lots of interest already and I hope it will give me more confidence in presenting, which I’ll have to do a lot more of in my studies and my career.

Noah stood in front of their research poster

Isobel Keene, BA (Hons) History - The problem of child sexual abuse and the extent of public awareness in Bristol, 1880-1914

Isobel stood in front of their research poster

Tell us about your research

It’s on the problem of child sex abuse and the extent of public awareness in Bristol between 1880 and 1914. So it’s quite a hard-hitting topic that people don’t like to talk about, but that’s why I do it, because it’s still a problem today. If you work out what happened in the past, you can then prevent it in the future.

The victims were working-class girls, mainly in domestic service, and the main abusers were employers. But the court cases reported on were mostly cases between strangers - so the strange man lurking in the park, saying this is the real threat, even though it’s mainly family and employers. That created the ‘stranger danger’ narrative that’s still present today.

How have you found the event?

It’s really good just to see everyone’s work. I think it’s a nice way to present it, because you do your dissertation and then you think ‘what now?’ but it’s nice to be able to show other people. I think it's a good way for everyone to talk about what they’ve learnt, and learn about different areas.

Chirag Shrimali, BSc (Hons) International Hospitality Management - Restaurant customers’ responses to waiting time: a study of eat-in restaurants in Ahmedabad, India

Tell us about your research

My research is about the perception of waiting times at restaurants and how customers who visit restaurants in a city in India react to waiting, so whether they feel happy, they feel sad, or they do not have any emotions. We also tried to find out to what extent they wanted to visit a restaurant again. I found that nearly 20% of respondents felt that waiting time was inevitable, so they thought that rather than reducing the wait, it’s important to manage the wait.

How have you found the event?

It is a very good opportunity for students, especially undergraduates, because there are a lot of opportunities for postgraduate students, but undergraduate presentations are quite uncommon. The support by the University and the platform to do this is really amazing, and I think I’ll participate in the future as well. One of my main motivations for doing this research and presenting it here is because I want to pursue further studies in academia.

Chirag stood in front of their research poster

Ali Hutchin, MA Education - The autistic experience of higher education: “My autism is a contributing factor in all experiences I have”

Ali stood in front of their research poster

Tell us about your research

I used anonymous questionnaires to ask autistic students about every aspect of university life and how it relates to their autism and how it presents additional barriers, as well as any support they might have wanted or felt they needed.

The number one request was a support menu - being able to access at all times a list of all the support that is possibly available. Say you click on ‘I need extra time in exams’, it will take you exactly to who you have to talk to get that to happen.

I was surprised to get a majority female participation response because statistically white men get diagnosed more easily and a lot of research still gets a majority of male participants.

How have you found the event?

Good! One of the judges was telling me about his autistic daughter and how a lot of this reflects her experiences, which is very validating.

Yasmin Arnould, MSc Psychology - The relationship between spelling errors and written composition quality in bilinguals with and without dyslexia

Tell us about your research

My research is on dyslexia in bilingualism. Institutions have been very good at putting in place inclusive support plans that help students with learning disabilities, but bilingualism stays aside because there isn't much research on how it is affected by dyslexia. I wanted to address that by studying the added effect of dyslexia on bilingualism and try to investigate the different patterns of errors that can be found in groups of bilinguals with dyslexia that might be different to the spelling errors that are found in other groups.

I am currently recruiting and collecting data to hopefully get some results that are similar to my hypothesis - or maybe not! You never know when you’re doing research. But hopefully I will be contributing towards the knowledge in the field.

How have you found the event?

It’s great to see everyone’s research because we are very limited in terms of our interactions within departments. I am very aware of what’s happening in Psychology, but I have no idea what’s happening in Geography. Or even within the same faculty, in Health and Life Sciences, I have no idea what’s going on in Global Health and it’s so interesting.

So it’s a great event. I think it’s a great opportunity to meet new people, to get people talking about their research and things they're interested in.

Yasmin is currently recruiting participants for this research - find out how you can take part.

Yasmin stood in front of their research poster

Student Research Launch Pad Prizes

A judging panel of academics and students from across the University awarded prizes to 18 participating students for the quality of their research projects and their presentation delivery.

The ‘Outstanding’ awards went to:

Emily Palmer - Empowering nursing students: giving voice to the next generation
Liberty Griffin - Applying the prototype willingness model to predict binge-drinking and investigate the influence of gain, loss, and combined message-framing

For the full list of winners and to find out more about the event, visit the Get Published! website.