Submissions are now open for Knowledge Beyond Boundaries, LSE’s annual interdisciplinary student research conference, taking place in person as part of the LSE Festival on Wednesday 14 June 2023. The conference is open to all current undergraduate and taught master’s students at LSE, current students at CIVICA member universities as well as recent alumni of undergraduate and taught master’s programmes. This conference gives you the chance to showcase your investigation, research and communication skills, offering you the opportunity to gain valuable presentation experience while networking with students from outside your own degree programme.
This year’s conference draws on the LSE Festival 2023 theme of people and change: how does change affect people? How do people effect change? We welcome student research from across the social sciences which considers how individuals and collectives are shaping the world, and how global shifts and transformations are shaping us.
This conference is the ideal forum for you to interrogate how we approach research questions, create and disseminate knowledge, and break down barriers between disciplines. The conference aims to provide a friendly, inclusive space for sharing student research from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, with an emphasis on projects that cross disciplinary boundaries, challenge existing paradigms, and apply new approaches and methods to re-envision what social science research looks like.
At the conference, you can share work you’ve completed as part of your degree programme, try out new ideas in front of a diverse audience, or collaborate with other students to investigate a research question together. Here, research means any scholarly work – it may be informative, critical, or creative. Works in progress are very much encouraged – the conference will be an opportunity to gather useful feedback as you develop your project further.
Submissions will be organised into themed panels with a range of perspectives, approaches, and ideas represented. You can submit on any social science topic, with preference given to submissions that link their research to this year’s theme: people and change. Collaborative submissions are highly encouraged, especially those which bring together researchers with different disciplinary expertise.
All LSE undergraduates, taught master’s students, and recent alumni are invited to submit an abstract for this year’s conference. You can submit an abstract to present a paper, poster, creative show and tell, or performance, either as an individual or part of a collaboration - see more about presentation types below. Abstracts will be reviewed by a panel of LSE academics and those accepted will be invited to participate in the conference. Abstracts should be no more than 250 words.
Submit your abstract here
The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 23:59 (BST) on Sunday 2 April 2023.
You will be contacted about the outcome of your submission on or before Wednesday 19 April 2023.
We look forward to receiving your submissions! If you have any questions as you prepare your abstract, please send them to the conference organisers using this form.
- Paper: a 10-minute presentation of original research
- Poster: a 3-5 minute ‘flash talk’ presentation accompanied by a single poster slide
- Creative show and tell: a 10-minute presentation sharing an artefact or item with research significance (e.g. archival material, photograph, object, etc.)
- Performance: an original artistic expression of up to 10 minutes which relates to academic research or study of the social sciences (e.g. spoken word, dance, poetry, music, etc.) (NB: this can be pre-recorded and played at the conference if required).
All presentations will be organised into themed panels and will include time for Q&A and discussion. Each panel will include a discussant (typically an LSE PhD student with expertise relevant to the panel theme) who will provide feedback on presentations and facilitate discussion and dialogue between panellists and conference attendees.
Want to submit an abstract but don’t know where to start? Thinking of a research question but not sure how to turn it into a conference presentation? Check out these opportunities to get support as you write your abstract:
- Meet a collaborator session (date TBC): this “speed-dating” style session will offer an opportunity to meet other students from around LSE and find potential collaborators who might be interested in a similar research question.
- Abstract writing workshops: these online workshops will delve into the process of writing an abstract, offering tips and tricks on how to write about your research in an engaging way. Workshops will include practice exercises to help get you started in abstract writing.
General enquiries
Contact us via our enquiry form