ITP Symposium To Be Held At SIT

The 2022 ITP (Institutes of Technology & Polytechnics) Research Symposium is being hosted by SIT, a business division of Te Pūkenga, next week at the Invercargill Campus. This year’s event aims to bring ITP staff together for research networking and collaboration as they move towards becoming one entity under Te Pūkenga.

Conference organiser and SIT Research Co-ordinator, Dr James Savage said he and fellow organiser, Dr Sally Bodkin-Allen, are looking forward to welcoming eighty attendees from other ITPs across the country and showing them some proper southern hospitality. Including SIT staff, around 110 people will be attending the event.

“We worked quite hard to encourage attendance” said Dr Savage, being uncertain of the response after a COVID-disrupted two years. This included some major changes to the 2022 symposium from previous years.

“We’ve expanded out from the usual formats, including adding creative practice presentations to ensure our colleagues in creative fields can also participate,” Dr Savage said.

On the opening night, a two-hour showcase of these newly introduced presentations will take place at Te Rau o Te Huia Centre for Creative Industries, including performances, art displays, and computer games alongside more traditional research poster presentations.

In total, over 150 presentations are planned for this year, covering a wide range of topics: Creative Industries, Health and Wellbeing, Sustainability, Built Environment, Business, Information Technology, Education, and Research Approaches and Methodologies. Around seventy of these will be traditional in-person research talks, and fifty will be pre-recorded talks from ITP staff not able to travel to Invercargill.

“We have participants from every ITP that offers degree courses – It will be fantastic to see people building networks and collaborations again after some difficult years and disconnection,” said Dr Savage.

Another new aspect is the sector merging into a single organisation, creating new opportunities for networking and collaborating as one entity.

“We’ve set aside time for dedicated sessions focused on the key research areas in Te Pūkenga, led by panels of staff representing expertise currently in the network. We built this structure into the symposium to encourage and support research collaboration and discussions around funding, research strategy, and how to develop capacity in each area,” Dr Savage said.

The symposium runs from Wednesday 30th November to Friday 2nd December, at Te Rau o Te Huia Centre for Creative Industries, SIT Invercargill Campus.

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