ResBaz Wellington 2023
Inspiring VUW researchers in times of uncertainty
Back in 2018, when I was starting my PhD at Te Herenga Waka- Victoria University of Wellington, I shared my first impressions from ResBaz on myView. The conference left a lasting impression not just because of the variety of topics it covered but mainly through the lovely community of people involved in it. I kept attending each year: in person until 2020 and behind my laptop screen, when it turned into a big nationwide online event (ResBaz Aotearoa).
In a wonderful twist of faith, 5 years later, I am now not just an attendee but also an organiser. Our Research Capability Team at CAD (Centre for Academic Development) wanted to expand the online event with good old in-person interaction. Instead of listening to presentations, we saw an opportunity to get people talking to each other and thinking together. By talking to researchers across disciplines, we identified a hunger for discussing research collaboration, crafting your research narrative in preparation for PBRF rounds, and managing research data and non-traditional research outputs. We then chose a new interactive conference format based on panel discussions and workshops.
The timing of the conference (3–4 July) was precarious, though! The wind of change that started blowing in June had left students and staff rightfully rattled and worried about the future. Many people wondered, ‘Wouldn’t you cancel?’. We did not want to. To us, creating space for such research discussions was too integral to the research environment in a modern, high-quality academic institution.
We also wanted to go beyond inviting other research capability and support staff to join as speakers and facilitators by actively including them in the process. From co-designing the sessions to delivering them and collecting data and feedback on things that would be useful for research support efforts in the long run.
With 120+ registered attendees over 2 days, ResBaz kept its core identity, connecting researchers across fields spanning from poetry to computational chemistry. It also evolved into something new, scaling up research discussions that are otherwise fragmented and happen in silos, serendipitously, one-on-one. The event connected graduate students and academics across faculties and helped many discover support resources they did not know were on offer to them. Collaborating on all of this brought research capability and support teams closer together.
ResBaz offered a look through multiple lenses: from keynote speakers Sydney Shep (Telling research stories with data) and Spencer Lilley (who addressed the diversity of Māori research contexts), to professional staff and panellists like Rere-No-A-Rangi Pope (working at the intersection of cultural heritage and digital technologies), mathematics and ecology expert Stephen Marsland, Claire Rye who manages data services at the New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI) and Jenny Wollerman: one of New Zealand’s best-known sopranos, to name a few.
I am happy we did not cancel. In a climate of uncertainty, this was a safe haven to focus on the bigger picture: what researchers need, how to support their journey and do better.
