2024 Conference Schedule

Macadam Building Terrace Café (ground floor)

• Tori Ekstrand, Ph.D., Royster Distinguished Professor and Associate Professor, UNC-Chapel Hill
• Emma Bishop, Partnerships Manger (Americas & South Asia), Global Engagement, King’s College London

Breakfast provided

Macadam Building MB2.1

• Laura Pratt, Fellowships Engagement and CareerWell Manager, UNC-Chapel Hill

This roundtable will invite scholars who are thinking through what it means to do community-centered and based research. We might all aspire to this, but what are the values and hallmarks of such work, and how might we learn from each other to really incorporate this? This conversation also invites scholars who are considering how to approach their research questions to ensure that they are not centering damage in their initial approach to their community of interest (whether that be in the proposal stage or prior to fieldwork) particularly if potential research may involve collaboration with communities who undergo/have undergone marginalization, violence, dispossession. 

• Tara Di Cassio, Geography, UNC-Chapel Hill
• Stephanie Kaczynski, Communication, UNC-Chapel Hill
  

Conferences are inevitably shaped by the site on which they are held, but this reality is often obscured by the focus on the conversations occurring. This workshop will ask participants to literally step outside of the traditional conference format by taking a self-guided walk through the site of the conference and the immediate area of London.

• Michael Baird, Art History, UNC-Chapel Hill
• Stephanie Kaczynski, Communication, UNC-Chapel Hill
  

• Tori Ekstrand, Ph.D., Royster Distinguished Professor and Associate Professor, UNC-Chapel Hill
  

“Purpose-Driven Knowledge in Service of Society: Five Tips for Impact-Inspired Researchers”

Macadam Building MB2.1

Student participants present their own research. Moderated by Aashka Dave and Lily Chen.

• 9:00-9:20 – ken Ge (UNC-Chapel Hill) “Ethnographic Research from the Water Line: Postcolonial Affects and Emotional Infrastructure in the Global Cruise Industry”
• 9:25-9:45 – Victoria Kratel (KUC) “From Silence to Significance: Advancing Disconnection Research by Prioritizing Women’s Narratives”
• 9:50-10:10 – Luciana Andrade (KCL) “Decision-making in adoption of AI – A multiple case study in Health Regulatory Agencies”

Macadam Building MB2.1

In this workshop, we will present a framework that situates research along a continuum, from no community involvement to community driven. Through interactive exercises and discussions, participants will critically examine their own projects, evaluating where they fall on the continuum and identifying opportunities for increased community involvement. This workshop aims to equip participants with the knowledge and tools necessary to navigate the complexities of community engagement in research effectively.

• Alita Miller, Pharmaceutical Sciences, UNC-Chapel Hill
• Josh Miller, Nutrition, UNC-Chapel Hill
• Ruitian Yan, Environment, Ecology, and Energy, UNC-Chapel Hill

Approximately five-minute walk from Macadam Building to King’s Building.

Lunch provided

Four years ago, the Digital Literacy and Communications (DLC) Lab began what has become known as the Critical Games Studies Program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Housed in the English and Comparative Literature Department. Its purpose has been to develop a pedagogical approach and corresponding curriculum that center identity, power, and design in the teaching of games. Central to our program is a gaming classroom (the Greenlaw Gameroom) that is equipped with consoles and gaming towers that enables simultaneous gameplay of an entire class. Our presentation will outline the development of this program and gaming centered classroom, including a hands-on example of our approach to Critical Game Studies pedagogy through an exploration of a module on indigenous world building in Never Alone or <Kisima Ingitchuna> (created 2014 by a collaboration between E-Line Media, Upper One Games, and the Cook Inlet Tribal Council of the Iñupiaq Community).

• Courtney Rivard, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of English & Comparative Literature and School of Data Science and Society, and Director of the DLC lab, UNC-Chapel Hill
• Dr. Steven Gotzler, Ph.D., Assistant Teaching Professor of English & Comparative Literature, and Associate Director of the DLC lab, UNC-Chapel Hill
• David Hall, Ph.D. Candidate in English & Comparative Literature, and Graduate Assistant Director of the Critical Game Studies Program, UNC-Chapel Hill
• Stephanie Kinzinger, Ph.D. Candidate in English & Comparative Literature, and Graduate Assistant Director of the Critical Game Studies Program Manager
• Doug Stark, Ph.D. Candidate in English & Comparative Literature and Gaming Research Coordinator, UNC-Chapel Hill

This event has been organized with the generous support of a UNC Global Partnership Award and the KCL Global Partnership Fund.

Approximately 31-minute walk from King’s Building.

The closest Tube stations are Temple to Westminster on the District or Circle lines.

Join us for a walking tour around Westminster – the beating heart of British politics, that was once the centre of a global empire. Even though Britain’s imperial power is relegated to history, the long process of colonisation and decolonisation defines the world we live in today. At its height, the phrase “the Empire on which the sun never sets” was used to describe the vastness of the British Empire.

Today, symbols of decolonisation such as statues of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela occupy the same space as Imperial heroes like Sir Winston Churchill. What does this tell us about post-colonial Britain and the soft power of monuments?

We will discover how stories and ideas from history connect to our present through the Black Lives Matter movement, the Gurkha Justice Campaign and the Policing Bill 2021.

• Manasi Pophale, Creative Director of History Speak

Macadam Building MB2.1

Student participants present their own research. Moderated by Emmanuel Amoako and Ruitian Yan.

• 9:00-9:20 – Anneliese Brei (UNC-Chapel Hill) “Detecting the Unreliable Narrator & Other Work with Narratology and AI”
• 9:25-9:45 – Jaweria Cheema Sarfraz (Tübingen) “Understanding the Development of Agency and Health Information Seeking Behaviors Among Pakistani Women Migrants: A Qualitative Study”
• 9:50-10:10 – Lily Chen (UNC-Chapel Hill) “Breaking the Silence in Mental Health”

Macadam Building MB2.1

This interactive and reflective workshop will provide tools for cultivating the skills and characteristics necessary to engage in effective interdisciplinary collaborations. Good collaborators embody characteristics that enable sharing across boundaries, allow for empathetic perspective taking, and foster open-minded engagement with different inquiry approaches. What are these characteristics, and how can we cultivate them? Join us to explore your own interdisciplinary and collaborative superpowers and further develop your collaborative mindset and skills.

• Brian Rybarczyk, Ph.D., Associate Dean for Professional Development, UNC-CH

Graduate school is typically defined by standard, academic measures of success: publications, courses taught, milestones to dissertation completion, conference presentations etc. And yet, these measures may not reflect the priorities or needs of graduate students themselves. In this workshop, we will use principles of human-centered design to help students brainstorm what success means to them and then use rapid prototyping methods to develop and test ideas that would improve success for graduate students. This workshop aims to help graduate students reflect on their individual definitions of success, introduce principles of human-centered design and rapid prototyping, and allow Royster Global attendees to develop possible models for a successful, human-centered graduate student experience.

• Nina Altmaier, Media and Communication Studies, Tübingen
• Aashka Dave, Information and Library Science, UNC-Chapel Hill
• Josh Miller, Nutrition, UNC-Chapel Hill

• Tori Ekstrand, Ph.D., Royster Distinguished Professor and Associate Professor, UNC-Chapel Hill

Approximately 25-minute walk from Macadam Building to the Winston House.

Meet alumni from various UNC-Chapel Hill graduate programs who are living and working in London.

• Kate Moser, Associate Dean for Development, UNC-Chapel Hill

Hors d’oeuvres and drinks provided

Macadam Building MB2.1

Student participants present their own research. Moderated by ken Ge and Alita Miller.

• 9:00-9:20 – Emmanuel Amoako (UNC-Chapel Hill) “Using a User-Centered Design to Ensure Financial Security for One Million Households in Africa”
• 9:25-9:45 – Mrinalini Dey (KCL) “Understanding Social Determinants of Health in Chronic Diseases: A Focus on Inflammatory Arthritis”
• 9:50-10:10 – Mandy Badermann (Tübingen) “Predicting Mental Health Disorders Using Parameters From Student Life”
• 10:15-10:35 – Aashka Dave (UNC-Chapel Hill) “Capitalizing on Climate Models: (Mis)information, Financial Motivations, and ESG Funds”

Macadam Building MB2.1

This discussion will cover the human, communal, and lifestyle dimensions of academic research. It will not be a pure research discussion, but it will go beyond it, including personal experiences of researchers in the context of knowledge creation. We hope the valuable insights on this topic can help other Ph.D. scholars who are at the beginning of their research.

• Jaweria Sarfraz, Media Studies, Tübingen
• Lily Chen, Nursing, UNC-Chapel Hill

How Can a Researcher Use AI to Better Connect with a Community? What AI technologies are available to researchers? Are they useful to 1) Discover what a community needs? 2) Aid in the research process? 3) Inform the community about the research? How can we use tools such as ChatGPT to enrich these processes? Participants will explore some of these tools in a hands-on fashion.

• Anneliese Brei, Computer Science, UNC-Chapel Hill

• Tori Ekstrand, Ph.D., Royster Distinguished Professor and Associate Professor, UNC-Chapel Hill

Approximately 22-minute walk from Macadam Building to Tuttons Covent Garden

Remarks from conference organizers, participants, and more.

Dinner provided; alcoholic beverages paid individually.