skip to primary navigation skip to content
 

Visitors

Garden scene

The Science and Technology research group welcomes different types of visitors.

Visiting Speakers

Colleagues working in research areas linked to the research interests of the STEM group are sometimes invited to speak at one of our seminars or other events. The colleagues normally only visit for the day, although sometimes Visiting Scholars (see below) will contribute to the seminar programme. (See the list of some of the former seminar talks given to the group.)

Informal visitors

Members of the Science Technology & Mathematics Education academic group often host short visits from colleagues with whom they are collaborating, or who are working on related projects. These informal visits may be of varying length - from one day to several weeks (but are less than one month) - and do not require approval at Faculty level (but do not offer any institutional support to the visitor, and do not have any formal status.)

Visiting Scholars

From time to time the academic group also host formal visits of invited visiting scholars. These visits vary in duration from one month to one year. The faculty provides the visitor with desk space in Faculty and access to telephone, computer etc., and access to the faculty library (and the University Library by arrangement). Visiting Scholars are considered to be members of the group during their visit and are incited to take part in the intellectual life of the Faculty.

Visiting Scholars are invited by the Head of Faculty, in response to a request by an academic group (such as STeM), subject to approval of the Director of Research, and it is necessary for such visits to be proposed well in advance. There is normally a bench fee that needs to be paid to help cover the administrative and technical costs of supporting a visit. 

The Faculty has only limited capacity to host visitors, so only a limited number of Visiting Scholars are are invited for any particular term. Visiting Scholars are invited  where there is clear benefit to both the visitor and the faculty of the visit. This normally means that the visitor will be working on research/scholarship that closely links with work being undertaken by the faculty. A member of the group who proposes a visit must show that the visit is likely to contribute to moving forward the research agenda of the host (and possibly other members of the group/faculty). Visiting scholars may be based in any institution or country, but are generally well-established academics. Normally we would expect a visit to be a development of an existing collaboration between the host and the visiting scholar.

Due to the popularity of Cambridge as a location for academic visitors, invitations to potential visiting scholars cannot be assured even when all the normal criteria are met.

Student visitors

The academic group often receives requests from overseas students to spend time in the Faculty as part of their graduate study. Often such approaches are associated with a request for a member of the academic staff to act as supervisor for the student during their visit. Unfortunately we are only occasionally able to offer such a facility to students. The faculty policy on student visitors may be found here.

The bench fee charged to visiting scholars is a contribution to administrative and service costs, and does not include any component for staff tuition/supervision time. The British model of graduate study expects students to work full time on their studies, and our graduate students are not expected to work as research or teaching assistants during their graduate course. The faculty is therefore not set up to provide places for student visits on an 'internship' type basis as we generally do not have suitable projects to employ the time and skills of visiting students.

(Please also visit the Faculty's general information for potential visiting scholars.)