Founded by Dr Hannah Dee MBE, The BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium is an annual two-day conference for women and non-binary students of Computing and related subjects. The event started in 2008, and moves around the country.
Lovelace 2026 will be in Bath, on the 8th and 9th April 2026. Our Call for Abstracts is now closed and we reviewed 262 submissions from women and non-binary people studying computing (BSc, BEng, MSc, MEng, etc.) in a UK University. Acceptance emails have been issued and we look forward to welcoming our poster presenters to Bath.
Lovelace Colloquium Leadership Team
Dr Safia Barikzai, London South Bank University (Chair) Dr Hannah Dee, Aber (Founder, Deputy Chair) Dr Jacqui Chetty, University of Birmingham (Deputy Chair) Dr Myles Dempsey, Sheffield Hallam University (Deputy Chair)
The group photo from Salford Lovelace
Aims of the Lovelace Colloquium
The aims of this event are to support and encourage women and non-binary students, and:
- To provide a forum for undergraduate and masters students to share their ideas and network
- To provide a stimulating series of talks from women in computing, both from academia and industry
- To provide both formal (talks) and informal (networking) advice to undergraduates and masters students about careers in computing from women and non-binary people’s perspectives
Each year we have a great series of talks, and an opportunity for students to discuss their own work in the form of a poster contest, with cash prizes provided by industry sponsors. Google sponsored all events from 2008-2019 enabling us to cover the travel costs (and overnight accommodation if necessary) for all students in the poster contest, and other industrial and academic bodies have provided additional sponsorship covering prizes and lunch. The BCSWomen Lovelace conferences in 2020-2022 didn’t involve much travel budget, but we have very much enjoyed being in-person since visiting Sheffield, Liverpool and Glasgow.
Past Conferences
In 2025, we were hosted by the University of Glasgow – you can read an account of the day on Colloquium 2025: Glasgow.
If you have any questions about the event, check out our FAQ. We also have some Student Testimonials about the event if you want to see what previous attendees have thought.
You can see details of previous events including lists of prizewinners here: Previous Conferences
Sponsor Us!
As our audience are all undergrad and MSc students, covering travel is really important, and we like to put the students in a small number of hotels (for social and for safety reasons) so we prefer to cover accommodation centrally.
We have University partnerships and supporter status whereby institutions pledge to cover the travel of their own students, or donate to the event so that we can cover it (and lunch).
We are keen for the Lovelace Colloquium to remain financially sustainable therefore if your values align with our and you wish to sponsor the event or make a donation, please contact the Lovelace Colloquium Leadership team (Safia, Hannah, Myles, Jacqui) on lovelacecolloquium@bcs.co.uk
Our donation link will be activated soon!
Subscribe to BCSWomen Lovelace Publicity
Lecturers, students, and other interested parties wishing to find out more can subscribe to our announcements list. This is a Google group which you can view or subscribe to using the links below: we promise to restrict this group to announcements so you’ll get just a handful of messages a year, all about how to contribute and sign up to the event