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Festival of Early Stage Researchers (FESR)

FESR UCL No Dates


Explore, network and celebrate with your community.

The Festival of Early Stage Researchers (FESR) is UCL’s way to say thank you to the largest community of researchers in the UK. It is an annual festival, recognising and celebrating the invaluable contribution from UCL’s Early Career Research Staff and Researchers to research and innovation. 

Co-designed with early stage researcher representatives, each year the festival explores topics which are important to the community via interactive workshops, expert panels and networking opportunities. Researchers join the festivities to enhance their professional and personal skill sets, preDoctoral pare for the next steps in their career, share experiences and build their cross-disciplinary connections.

To get involved with our festival, explore our Festival of Early Stage Researchers Hub for further information on programme details, resources and updates from the festival throughout the years. 

Explore the FESR Hub

Would you like to shape FESR 2025 to make it our most successful event to date?

We want to hold a Festival for Early-Stage Researchers designed and delivered by Early-Stage Researchers.  Are you an early career reseach staff member or doctoral researcher interested in networking across disciplines and functions? Do you want to build on your teamwork, communication, (event) organisation, and/or budgeting skills? We would welcome your contribution to making FESR 2025 what you are looking for to complement and enhance your research experience at UCL. Join the FESR Planning Committee!

The Planning Committee will meet initially fortnightly online from mid-October onwards for 1 hour to agree and deliver on:

  1. Aims, objectives and success measures for the 2025 festival.
  2. Timing, format and alignment with any other cross-institutional events.
  3. A festival programme that includes items of interest and relevance to researchers based within all faculties and encourages cross-faculty networking where possible.

Once these points are agreed on, we will form more specialised sub-committees responsible for the various aspects of delivering the festival successfully.

Please indicate your interest in representing UCL researchers by completing the joinig form by Monday 7 October. 

Join the FESR Planning Committee

 

 

“Now in its fifth year, the festival is a really valuable opportunity to celebrate and support early career researchers, who bring such innovation, creativity and energy to our research ecosystem. The 2024 festival theme is ‘community’, the fostering of which is fundamental to research. This is a wonderful opportunity to make connections, share experiences and develop new ideas and approaches with your peers." – Dr Michael Spence AC, President and Provost, UCL

"The Festival of Early Stage Researchers has been a highpoint in my annual calendar to connect with, and learn from, other ECR’s outside of my lab and discipline. UCL’s Collaborative Social Science Early Career Network had the amazing opportunity to contribute to FESR 2023. Preparations were collegiate and the stage was perfect for sharing our Collaborative Research Manifesto! Presenting our future research provocations to a diverse body of early career colleagues across UCL led to many insightful and memorable exchanges."  – Dr Ned Barker, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow

Digital Accessibility in Action

Discover how we put the Digital Accessibility policy into practice when planning and delivering the 2023 Festival of Early Stage Researchers (FESR in Action: Festival of Early Stage Researchers)