º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ Doctoral College

Training and events

A roomful of doctoral researchers

Research Café

Research Café (formally known as Café Academique) is a unique, popular, social and educational event for Doctoral Researchers and Research Staff (i.e., Research Associate, Research Fellows and Senior Research Fellows).

Research Café offers an opportunity to bring researchers together from across the university to share and discuss their research to those outside their field in a relaxed and informal setting. It also provides a great chance to practice and gain feedback on any approaching internal/external presentations that researchers may have.

Each Café typically has three presenters (10-15 minutes each) followed by scholarly chatter.

For information on how to register your interest in presenting at a future Research Café please see below.


Want to present your work at a Research Café?

If you would like to share your research at a Research Café, please complete this short form which requests the following information:

  • Name
  • School/Dept.
  • Year of study
  • An attention/interest sparking title 
  • A brief description of your research (consider what? why? how? what? so what?)

The times and dates of the upcoming Research Cafés will depend on the availablity of the speakers - stay tuned for more information in due course.

All selected speakers will be offered feedback by Enhanced Academic Practice prior to Research Café taking place.

If you have any questions, please contact Dr Katryna Kalawsky.


Prior Café events and presenters:

May 2023: 

  • Alizée Cambier (Doctoral Researcher - School of Business) "Cheating in Contest: An Experimental Study"
  • Rhianna Garrett (Doctoral Researcher -  School of Social Sciences and Humanities) "Mobility, Space, and Race"
  • Dr Luke Peters (Research Fellow - School of Science) "Terahertz Light – Seeing with Hyperspectral Eyes"
  • Raquel Radoman Doctoral Researcher - School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering) "Application of Open Architectures in Military Systems

February 2021 - LGBT+ History Month:

  • Lauren Whitehouse - "Being non-binary affects the way you interact with the world quite significantly and definitely the way you interact with sport: A sporting oral history project" - School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences.
  • Joanna Harper - "Performance analysis of transgender athletes" - School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences.
  • Gabe Knott-Fayle - “Sport is just sport: The discursive construction of sport as a cisgender space" - Social Sciences and Humanities

October 2020 - Black History Month Special:

  • Naomi Howard - "Black Role Models - Resilience and Threats to Success" - School of Science
  • Chidinma Okorie  - "Connecting the dots: Aren't we all migrants?" - Social Sciences and Humanities
  • Jedi Mould - "The relationship between income-generating activities of women, dietary behaviours and feeding practices of infants and young children in urban Ghana" - School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences.

September 2020:

  • Aaron Eames - "'Did Oscar Wilde Really Say That?" - Social Sciences and Humanities
  • Callie Merrick - "A multisensory approach to human wetness perception" - School of Design and Creative Arts
  • Thomas Baker - "Plastic Pollution and the Circular Economy: Where are we and where should we be?" - School of Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering
  • Theresa Wege - "Why young children count wrong units" - School of Science
  • Fiona Meeks - "Stimulating informal networks in a heterogeneous regional cluster through a team-based network intervention" - º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ London (Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship)

July 2019:

  • Akash Ratnayaka - "Super storage solutions with capacitors" - School of Science
  • Enefola Odiba - "Creating a Culture of Quality for Organisational Success" - School of Architecture, Building & Civil Engineering
  • Leah Henrickson - 'Who is the Author of the Computer-Generated Text? - School of Art, English and Drama

May 2019:

  • Diana Mehta - "Cleaning up our act on energy" - School of Science
  • Chris McLeod - "You can't eat that now!" - School of Sport Exercise & Health Sciences
  • Lucy Zhu - "Why there are people crazy about eSports?" - School of Sport Exercise & Health Sciences
  • Alistair Wilson - "Blockchain: What it is, what it isn’t and why it matters" - School of Architecture, Building & Civil Engineering

May 2018: 

  • Hugh Tawell - "It's time to wake up to sleepness sickness" - School of Science (Chemistry)

  • Gori Olusina Daniel - "Do bribes work?" - Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ London



  • Vani Naik - "Women professors: an oxymoron" - School of Business and Economics

 February 2018:

  • Mohsen Sayyah - "What is Sports Biomechanics? An application in springboard diving” - School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

  • Anthony Quinn - "Why does Vehicle Crime repeatedly occur in certain parts of Leicestershire?" - School of Social, Political and Geographical Sciences

  • Beth McMurchie - "Finding fingerprints in the dark" - School of Science (Chemistry)

  • Dan Wright - "Overheating in UK homes" - School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering

 July 2017:

  • Avinoam Baruch"How citizen science could change the way we respond to disasters"  - School of Social, Political and Geographical Sciences

  • Matthew Healey - "Tainted blood: A search for prions" - School of Science

  • Sophia Tetteh - “How to design a face”  - º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ Design School

  • Aron Sherry - “Should we have chair-free classrooms?” - School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences