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Official launch of the Early Careers Forum in Ljubljana

The EUSPR Early Careers Forum was formally launched during the Sixth EUSPR Conference and Members’ Meeting, 22-24 October 2015, in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Thanks to financial support from the EU co-funded SPAN project, we were able to offer an early-careers event on every day of the conference, including specially themed workshops, a networking event, early-careers parallel session, and special awards. Below we briefly report on the various activities that took place:

  • Early Careers Forum Launch and Networking Event
  • Pre-conference workshop: “Writing for publication and publishing papers”
  • Pre-conference workshop: “Conducting systematic reviews”
  • Post graduate and Early Career parallel sessions
  • Giving of this year’s Early Career Prize

We hope you’ll agree that the launch of the EUSPR Early Careers Forum at this year’s EUSPR conference was a success. We want to take this opportunity to thank everyone again for coming and participating, and we would be very pleased to see you (again) at our events next year. If you wish to get involved in planning and holding early-careers events at the next EUSPR annual conference, please get in touch.

Early Careers Forum Launch and Networking Event

ECF lunch  Angelina Brotherhood ECF launch group

Early-career delegates had the opportunity to start the conference with a special networking event. We had initially reserved space for up to 25 people but we actually had to increase numbers due to popular demand!

This event also represented the formal launch of the EUSPR Early Careers Forum. Co-leads Angelina Brotherhood and Kimberley introduced themselves and the Forum. Attendees had the chance for informal exchange over lunch, but there were also structured activities to help develop the Forum further. Using discussion cards as prompts, attendees formulated expectations of and ideas for the Early Careers Forum. The results were collected in a comments box to help inform future decision-making.

Discussion cards

For those early-career delegates who had never attended an international conference before, this was an excellent opportunity to meet other people in an informal setting before the start of the conference.

Lunch was sponsored by the Science for Prevention Academic Network (SPAN) with co-funding from the European Union.

Pre-conference workshop: “Writing for publication and publishing papers”

Workshop publishing Michal Kimberley Group work Group work

There were two pre-conference workshops targeted especially at early-career delegates. Dr Kimberley Hill facilitated a workshop for delegates with limited experience of publishing in peer-reviewed journals (see here for details on the programme).

Workshop attendees had a wide range of research interests including parenting programmes, health promotion and prevention, motivational interventions and experiences of athletes or health professionals.

Update 01.02.2016: Videos from the pre-conference workshop are now available to watch online

  • Kimberley began the session with a presentation on the importance of publishing for early-career researchers.
  • This was followed by a keynote by Professor Michal Miovský on publishing preventive science, with guidance on good practice, ethics, developing drafts, authorship, predatory journals and responding to referees.
  • Following a brainstorming activity on publishing challenges, an expert panel of senior researchers, including Professor David Foxcroft, Professor Rosaria Galanti, Dr Amador Calafat and Professor Miovský, gave their experiences of publishing papers, speaking to editors and publication quality.
  • Prior to the workshop, delegates submitted their own draft papers or extended abstracts for publication, read and reviewed these in small groups. In the afternoon session, delegates discussed their feedback for each other’s papers in response to structured feedback. Members of the senior research panel were available to provide further guidance.
  • The workshop ended with feedback to the plenary on common themes that had arisen throughout the day, followed by closing remarks from the workshop facilitator.

Challenges identified by participants

Workshop feedback was extremely positive, with most delegates explaining that the knowledge and information gained was directly applicable to their work and suggesting that additional workshops should run in the future.

Pre-conference workshop: “Conducting systematic reviews”

Workshop reviews facilitators Workshop reviews

Geoff Bates and Angelina Brotherhood facilitated a methods workshop on systematic literature reviews (see here for details on the programme). The workshop featured many group-work exercises taking participants through the different steps of the systematic review process. We also discussed how to recognise good quality literature reviews; what to consider when writing up a literature review; and other forms of reviews, including reviews of qualitative research and reviews of reviews.

Feedback on the workshop from the evalution forms:

  • “Overview of systematic review process with key points. Very relevant if you have to analyse a review or write it. It was very useful!”
  • “Geoff and Angelina delivered the workshop really well – all information was delivered in a manner that made it easy to follow and they were happy to answer questions throughout the workshop.”
  • “To see motivated and excited people to talk about their area of expertise is very motivating for yourself.”
  • “The team work was productive, hearing other opinions and point of view on the subject, question each other’s thinking, very stimulating”

Post graduate and Early Career parallel sessions

Martha Canfield Sinziana I. Oncioiu

As in previous years, the annual conference featured special sessions for early-career delegates. This time there were two sessions and the contributions were not limited to postgraduate students.

Session 1 (chaired by Angelina Brotherhood; click here for the abstracts):

  • Peter Bohan – Examining Commissioners Leadership Behaviour
  • Rebecca Crook – Capital and identity: a theoretical perspective on drug use
  • Toni Maglica – Parents knowledege about youth gambling in Croatia: preliminary study results
  • Boris Chapoton – Messages about drinking and smoking in the content of the TV series most popular with French youth
  • Kim Ozano – Public Health in Rural Cambodia: An Exploration of Volunteer Community Health Workers (VCHW) using Photovoice Techniques

Session 2 (chaired by Rebecca Crook; click here for the abstracts):

  • Martha Canfield – Psychosocial factors associated with youth antisocial behaviour
  • Sinziana I. Oncioiu – Beyond randomization: “per-protocol” and “as-treated” analyses of brief counselling on tobacco cessation in dental clinics (the cluster randomized controlled trial FRITT)
  • Angelina Brotherhood – Exploring drugspheres: what characterises settings where substances are (not) consumed?
  • Nikki Gambles – Exploring the relationships between university life and student drinking behaviours during the transition to and through university
  • Kaidy Stautz – Alcohol promoting and alcohol warning advertisements: Impact on implicit cognition, emotion, and craving

Giving of this year’s Early Career Prize

Boris Chapoton Diana Jerkovic poster

The Early Career Researcher Prize (EUSPR/SPAN Award) – for outstanding promise based on a paper or poster presentation at the conference – was awarded to:

  • 1st prize: Boris Chapoton – Messages about drinking and smoking in the content of the TV series most popular with French youth (oral presentation, see abstract)
  • 2nd prize: Dijana Jerković – The role of self-determination and personality in predicting the cannabinoids consumption among students in student dormitories in Zagreb (poster presentation, see abstract)
  • 3rd prize: Milica Vasiljevic – Impact of advertisements promoting candy-like flavoured e-cigarettes on appeal of tobacco smoking amongst children: an experimental study (poster presentation, see abstract)

Below you can also find some tweets regarding our early-career activities at this year’s EUSPR conference:



This post was originally published on the main Early Careers Forum page and was moved here following establishment of this blog. It has been backdated to show the original publication date.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
EUSPR Early Careers Forum (October 27, 2015). Official launch of the Early Careers Forum in Ljubljana. Preventing disease and ill health. Retrieved November 14, 2024 from https://doi.org/10.58079/om9g


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