The BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium is an annual one day conference for women and non-binary students of Computing and related subjects. The event started in 2008, and moves around the country.
In 2022, we were online again, hosted by Aberystwyth, Lancaster and London South Bank University on Wednesday April 13th. The pages for 2022 can be found at Colloquium 2022. Our next event will be in person (assuming nothing goes wrong) and we’ll be hosted by the University of Sheffield. See Colloquium 2023 for plans as they develop!
If you have any questions about the event, check out our FAQ.
The group photo from Salford Lovelace
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, 2021 and 2022 haven’t involved much travel budget but we’re very much looking forward to visiting Sheffield in 2023 and if anyone wants to sponsor student travel, then get in touch!
You can see details of previous events including lists of prizewinners here: Previous Conferences
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
Subscribe to BCSWomen Lovelace Publicity
In 2019, at our last face-to-face event we had approximately 215 attendees, with the best and brightest women computing undergraduates in the UK. 15 employers brought stands or sent representatives and we are always looking to build on this employment fair aspect of the day. In 2020 and 2021, virtual Lovelaces saw fewer students and companies. 2020 (we were all a little busy in April 2020) still had over 140 people check in to the event, with several companies joining the discord server and hosting virtual “booths” on dedicated channels within that server. 2021 the server had over 200 attendees, with 15 companies and orgs represented in the employer-and-supporter zone.
Any companies wishing to sponsor the event or host a virtual stand should contact Dr Hannah Dee (hmd1@aber.ac.uk) for more information.