2020 Fall Exhibition

Thanks to all our contributors!

The 2020 Fall Exhibition took place from Dec. 1-9, 2020. It featured over 70 student contributors from various disciplines who shared stories about research both past and in-progress. We were blown away by the participation and support!

We’re hosting the first CURL conference you can attend in your PJs.
We may not be able to gather at Huron, but we can still showcase your fabulous work!

The 2020 Fall Exhibition will take place online from December 1-3.
Just like our regular Exhibitions, this asynchronous event will showcase Huron students’ research from any discipline.

This year, we’re challenging the notion of what a scholarly conference “looks like.”
Can submitting be more accessible? Learning more digestible? Presenting more fun?

We’re asking students to think outside the Powerpoint.
We’ll be showcasing your work through our social media channels—meaning your submission should be designed for Instagram or Twitter!

A view from above of a person sitting on the floor and typing on their laptop. They are dressed in cozy clothes.

What will the Fall Exhibition look like?

The 2020 Fall Exhibition will be hosted on CURL’s social media channels. For two days (or even longer if we get tons of submissions), CURL’s Instagram and Twitter will consist entirely of student-submitted work. We invite you to comment, share, and add your insights from your own accounts!

After the conference, a small selection of this work will be made available long-term on the CURL website.

How formal should my work be? Should my post read like a paper?

First answer: only somewhat. Second answer: nope!

Although presenting research through social media might be exciting, we recognize that it might also seem strange if you’ve been trained to present research in a very specific, formal, detailed way. We’d like to reassure you that we know an effective social media post won’t read like a paper—and that’s okay!

Social media posts challenge you to be more concise by being extremely selective with the details you include. The most effective posts are brief, humanizing, and fun! You could introduce yourself, include some photos, incorporate slang, or crack some jokes (nothing offensive, please)—all while sharing your knowledge with a much wider potential audience than a typical conference.

Composing for social media builds different writing muscles than composing an effective essay or formal presentation, but all of these skills are valuable. We encourage you to embrace this new way of sharing your knowledge without worrying you’ll appear foolish. If that gif from The Office or the expanding brain meme helps to illustrate your research process, use it!

Of course, don’t shoehorn jokes and memes in where they don’t belong: aim for language and imagery that help your audience remember points, make connections, and think critically.

We can’t wait to see what you come up with!

What work formats do you accept?

We accept student work in the form of Instagram or Twitter posts sent by email.

We encourage you to get creative with this: can you explain your research in 3 tweets or less? Can you turn your research poster into a 10-image Instagram post? What about a 1-minute video—or even a meme?

These are not requirements—just suggestions! You may also consider writing an Instagram post in the style of CURL’s research features or posing some scholarly questions on Twitter about the book you’re studying.

Resist the urge to try to cram every detail of a 10-minute talk into a 1-minute video or 3-paragraph feature. Which details are the most necessary? Which parts of your work were the most surprising, thought-provoking, satisfying, or even frustrating? See our Benefits & Tips document to learn more about sharing research on social media.

We ask that all students consider ways to make their work accessible to the disability community and others with non-normative access needs. Some guidelines can be found in the submission template that will be uploaded later this summer.

How do I submit?

Compile your images and text content into a single .zip file, upload it to our public OneDrive, then drop us a line at curl@uwo.ca to let us know! Be sure to check out our Submission Guide for full details, including filename conventions, image resolution/word count requiremnts, and the OneDrive link.