Doctoral Consortium

This one-day event will provide an opportunity for postgraduate research students studying in areas related to ergonomics and human factors to meet and learn about each others' research interests.

The cost is £50 for IEHF members, £75 for non-members.

In order to present a paper for this conference, you first need to submit an abstract using the link above. Please check the important dates below:

26 March: deadline for submissions of papers
26 April: authors notified of acceptance
7 May: submission of amended papers
10 May: final papers for printing in the proceedings

Once you have submitted your abstract (up to a max of 3000 characters on the online form), you will receive a confirmation email and a reference number that begins WO. You must keep a note of this W0 number as you will need this to link your abstract to your full paper.

As they will be blind reviewed, do not put your name in the author space of the paper or your affiliation in the affiliation space. You need to make sure throughout your paper that there are no references to either. Please use ******* instead. Save your paper as a Word document, with the reference number in the filename e.g. W01234.doc.

Your paper should be formatted according to the template below. It should be a maximum of 4 pages when formatted. The template will help you understand which font to use and how to format any tables. It will be printed in black and white so there should be no colour images.

Paper template

Your complete paper needs to be emailed to Sue Hull at s.hull@ergonomics.org.uk.

When your paper has been reviewed, you will receive comments and suggestions from the reviewers. You may need to make amendments to your paper and send it in again for the reviewer to confirm final acceptance. When your paper has been finally approved, you will need to add the author and affiliation. It will then be printed in a conference proceedings for the conference and handed out to all delegates at the event.

If you wish to submit a poster instead of a paper, please follow the above instructions and choose the poster option under submission type on the submission form. Use the template below. You will be given details of size for your poster nearer the time. All contributions will appear in the proceedings.

Poster template

If you have any questions please contact Sue Hull on 01509 234904 or email s.hull@ergonomics.org.uk.

Report from the Doctoral Consortium 2011

On June 7th 2011 the 2nd IEHF Doctoral Consortium was held at Brunel University. With presentations from many different areas of ergonomics and with the participation of recent graduates that shared their experiences, the Consortium achieved its goals once more. The friendly and open environment was enjoyed by all and provided the opportunity for postgraduate research students to meet and share their work.

The event saw eight presentations and two posters from students covering areas as diverse as workload assessment, crowd management, mobile device interaction and industry-related projects with air traffic controllers and railway maintenance crews.

Guest speakers Cyril Diels and Michael Brown shared their experiences with the attendees demonstrating the many different career paths available to ergonomics graduates upon completion of their degrees. Cyril's PhD focused on visually induced motion sickness and he is now a Senior Ergonomist at the Transport Research Lab (TRL). Michael, now a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) research associate based at Ordnance Survey, researched computer games usability for his PhD.

This year's Consortium was also marked by the participation of the President of the Réseau des Jeunes Chercheurs en Ergonomie, a French special interest group (SIG) of junior researchers in ergonomics. François Palici shared the objectives and achievements of the group and set down the first stone to build a bridge of cooperation and friendship between the French SIG and the newly created IEHF Special Interest Group for UK Research Students.

Next year, the Doctoral Consortium will be held at Loughborough University, on 29th May 2012.

As always, we would like to thank Sue Hull, Kia Horrocks and Ed Chandler for their help and support in organising this event. Thanks to Mark Young for hosting, and to Simon Hodder for joining the organising committee and offering to host next year. The standard of presentations and discussions was very high and we are delighted that the consortium has led to the students setting up their SIG, led by Nuno Cebola. We look forward to welcoming new members of the SIG at the Consortium next year. Proceedings of the event can be obtained by contacting Sue Hull at the IEHF office.

Report from the Doctoral Consortium 2010

The first ever Doctoral Consortium of the Institute took place at Nottingham University on the 19th of May. Delegates came from across the country to present their work and to meet other doctoral researchers within our multi-disciplinary field. The group included two EngDs (Engineering Doctorates) and students at different stages of their programmes, allowing for varied discussion of the process. The event was also attended by President Elect Peter Buckle who said: "The event is a day that shows the research engine of ergonomics and human factors is in very good shape. Now we need to nurture it."

The day began with a few presentations from current students and then Dr Roland Barge, a recently graduated PhD student, gave his observations on life after the PhD and some top tips for completing it. One student commented: "It's nice to hear from someone who’s gone through the experience and gives a fresh perspective on the opportunities available when finishing". A good mixture of activities throughout the day broke up the presentations and enabled good networking opportunities. It was felt that the questions and discussions were of particular value as it enabled the students to examine ideas to take their research to the next stage. Feedback from the students and academics was constructive and enabled the presenters to look at their work from a new viewpoint. It also allowed practice of asking and answering questions in a relaxed environment.

One of the day’s activities was to create scenarios examining ‘A Day in the Life’ 5 years and 25 years in the future as a way of exploring the issues that may be faced by ergonomics practitioners in the future. The results of this will be put on the IEHF website for open discussion and proposal of your own scenarios; we look forward to seeing your vision of the future!

During the discussion at the end of the day it was felt that it was important to allow students to enter either a poster or a presentation at future events, opening up the consortium to more attendees at different stages of their work.

The day's experience can be summed up by the comment: "It was a valuable day to meet and interact with other ergonomics PhD students, and it has the potential to become an important date in the IEHF calendar".