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 2023, after three online years, we were back in-person hosted by the University of Sheffield. See Colloquium 2023 for an account of the day – it was the biggest we’ve had, and it went pretty well!
In 2024 we will be hosted by the University of Liverpool on April 4th (with a social on the 3rd). You can watch our plans as they develop on the page for Colloquium 2024. Our Call for Abstracts is now open, so please share this with any women or non-binary people studying computing (BSc, BEng, MSc, MEng, etc.) in a UK University.
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.
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 2020-2022 didn’t involve much travel budget but we very much enjoyed visiting Sheffield in 2023 and over 110 students were supported in their travel to the event (with 84 staying at least one overnight). We have recently introduced 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). As our audience are all undergrad and MSc students, covering travel is really important, and we like to put the students in the same hotel (for social and for safety reasons) so we prefer to cover accommodation centrally.
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
Any companies wishing to sponsor the event or host a virtual stand should contact Safia Barikzai (safia.barikzai@lsbu.ac.uk) and Hannah Dee (hmd1@aber.ac.uk) for more information.