About Early Research Academics
ERA stands for Early Research Academics and is a student-organised and student-led platform aimed at bringing together postgraduate students and early career researchers.
The recent experiences of global pandemic and national lockdowns have forced us to slow down and scale down, but also to deviate from our routines and to rethink our mundane activities. We have become intimately acquainted with the private space of home while simultaneously detached from the public spaces of shared communal life.
Inspired, rather than hindered, by these new circumstances, we invite young scholars and early-stage researchers to join ERA - a space where horizontal alliances are forged, hierarchies no longer matter, and new ideas are born. Before the pandemic, we fought for grants to attend prestigious conferences and events, we strived to survive in a publish or perish environment - one where postgraduates are rejected from journals because they have yet to attain a PhD.
ERA is a project which aims to foster transnational cooperatives between early stage researchers and build bridges between people, places, and institutions. We want to bring a new approach to academia by creating an inclusive space of encounters and a starting point for important conversations and debates.
This year marked our very first conference and we aim to make it an annual event and an important date in academic calendars of early stage researchers.
ERA is the brainchild of doctoral students from University College London. We are all based at the Faculty of Arts & Humanities, School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS) and Centre for Multidisciplinary and Intercultural Inquiry (CMII). We come from different backgrounds and disciplines, but we share a common vision of creating and fostering an inclusive and innovative research spirit among our fellow early stage academics from all fields.
Our biggest goal is for this to be a place for not only just humanities, but for all research fields. We want to culminate a place for interdisciplinary. A place for connections, networking, growth, and learning that are currently devoid or be-muddled within the overwhelming chaos of universities.
We thank you for reading and for your interest in the ERA. There is more information on the Co-Founders below.
The ERA Team
Co-founders
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ERA is the brainchild of doctoral students from University College London. We are all based at the Faculty of Arts & Humanities, School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS) and Centre for Multidisciplinary and Intercultural Inquiry (CMII). We come from different backgrounds and disciplines but we share a common vision of creating and fostering an inclusive and innovative research spirit among our fellow early stage academics.
Izabella Wódzka
is a Polish-born UK-based scholar with background in European
languages and cultures; she recently finished her doctoral thesis in Film Studies. Her interest area is representations of marginalised identities in cinema, post-Soviet and post-communist cultures and spaces, interactions between centre and peripheries. You can find her on Twitter @BellaSardinella and on Instagram @izzypeazy
Brittany Eldridge
is an American scholar who is currently a doctoral candidate in the Health and Humanities Department with published works on fairy tale adaptations into film. She is interested in folklore, feminism, European history, adaptation, translation studies, adaptation studies, and Jungian approaches. She tweets at @BEldridg39
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Dr. Mathis Gronau AFHEA
finished his PhD on the experience of German Minorities in Britain and France during and after the First World War on which he published both online and. He taught both at the German Department, SEES, SELCS, and the German Society at UCL. Recently, he worked on the Banat Swabian Migration to France and Brazil in the postwar period at the Institut für Soziale Bewegungen Bochum. He is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
You can read more about us and our research here...