14th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference by SEERC, a research centre of CITY College

The 14th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference (PGR2020), organized by South East European Research Centre (SEERC), the research centre of CITY College, was successfully held online during 22nd - 26th June 2020.

More than 50 participants attended this year’s 20 research presentations –classified under four research tracks and accepted based on the extended abstracts submitted–, 4 research workshops and the 3MT (3-minutes thesis) competition. Almost all participants were extremely active in the online platform posting more than 150 questions and comments, which were collected during the presentation sessions by the session chairs. These were further forwarded to the presenters as additional feedback, complementarily with the oral and written feedback that more than 10 experienced researchers provided as discussants at the end of each presentation.

In order to facilitate the above process, 8 sessions were designed for including 2 or 3 papers maximum with no parallel sessions evolving concurrently, thus offering considerable time for discussion after each presentation maximizing  the attendance and creating an environment that also boosts interdisciplinarity. On average, 21 participants attended each of the 20 presentations and every session received on average a 4.8 out of 5 evaluation score in the polls taking place at the end of each session and attracting 275 votes. All the above, combined  with at least 2 reviews that presenters received towards their submitted extended abstract, contributed to achieving one of the two main goals of the PGR conference; to offer high-quality feedback to the participating young researchers, either PhD students or MSc/MA students that their MSc/MA thesis was on a research-oriented topic.

The other aim of the conference has been to offer high-quality research training to participating young researchers. To facilitate this, PGR2020 further included 4 Research seminars and workshops provided by experienced researchers (achieving on average a 4.9 out of 5 evaluation score) and the 3MT (3-minutes thesis) competition (enabling students to think and identify the most important points of their research to effectively communicate them in 3 minutes). Finally, students received training regarding valuable employability skills since they organized the conference completely by themselves under the guidance and mentoring of a few experienced researchers.

We would like to thank all participants, session chairs, discussants, research workshop organizers, presenters, and organizers for enabling an ecosystem to achieve research excellence through an enjoyable atmosphere.

We look forward to the next one (PGR2021), where we aim to use this year's experience and offer another successful hybrid event maximizing participation and engagement. Research is about asking the right questions, an aspect accurately reflected by the word cloud of the more than 150 questions and comments from all the participants.