BNA Local Groups Forum 2024: Member democracy in action

16th Sep 2024

Two weeks ago, on 2nd September, 20 BNA Local Group Representatives (LGRs) and BNA Local Group Student Representatives (LGSRs) from institutions around the UK and Ireland gathered in Birmingham for the 2024 BNA Local Groups Forum. LGRs and LGSRs are BNA members who have taken on a voluntary role to listen to the priorities of their local neuroscience communities, and support those people to make change together on the issues that matter to them, through joining and getting involved in their BNA Local Groups.

This annual event – one of the most important dates in the BNA calendar and hosted by a different Local Group each year – is where LGRs and LGSRs come together and represent their local neuroscience communities in national-level conversations about how we can best continue to take our organisation forwards. This year hosted by the Birmingham BNA Local Group, the Forum's programme featured some recent highlights from Local-Group-run BNA events, best practice for engaging more of the neuroscience community in our activity, and how we can use BNA resources to better support the interests of Early Career Researchers.

Farewells and new introductions

Our outgoing Local Groups Coordinator – Dr Volko Straub (Leicester LGR) – introduced the day and looked back on the journey that our Local Groups have been through over his 4-year term: navigating changes to teaching and learning in the wake of COVID-19 lockdowns, expanding the BNA's Group Membership Scheme to brings hundreds of new neuroscience students into our organisation each year, and overseeing the growth of our Local Groups network to 75 LGRs and LGSRs organising with 44 local communities of BNA members. He then handed over to our new Local Groups Coordinator – Dr Talitha Kerrigan (Exeter LGR) – who recapitulated her election manifesto goals to grow, maintain and support BNA members over the next four years:

• providing support, training and resources to LGRs and LGSRs so that they can work with their communities to identify and act on local needs, building strong, cohesive, inclusive and organised BNA Local Groups
• addressing the interests of early career researchers
• enhancing effective communication channels (between Local Groups and their wider communities, between BNA members and their LGRs/LGSRs, and between LGRs/LGSRs and the BNA's elected national leadership and executive team)

Two recently-appointed LGRs were also welcomed to the Forum for the first time: Sheila Mashate (Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust) and Paul Hubbard (Newcastle University).

Outgoing Local Groups Coordinator – Dr Volko Straub – recounts what BNA members have achieved over the last four years

Creatively meeting the needs of our neuroscience communities

A morning of lively presentations led by LGRs then ensued, each diving into the detail of a recent project or event that their Local Group members had designed and carried out together, using BNA Local Group Funding to create something that directly met the needs of their local neuroscience community:

• Professor Ellie Dommett (King's College London LGR) discussed how the KCL Local Group had helped arrange the NEUROART exhibition: bringing together neuroscientists, clinicians, artists, and people with lived experience of neurodiversity in an innovative public engagement project which is amplifying neurodiverse voices in neuroscience research.
• Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali (Teesside University LGR) spoke about her Local Group's work on the Teesside Dementia Research Partnership Event, which developed in response to a need for researchers to communicate their work to the general public and to ensure that dementia research is representative of the needs of those most directly affected by it (this event laid the foundations for the formation of the Dementia Research Partners Network, which will do just that).
• Ryan Stanyard (Keele University LGR) gave an illuminating breakdown of how BNA members from King's College London, the Univerity of Warwick, Imperial College London, University College London, and Birkbeck University of London pooled their resources to create the hugely successful Current Science and Society MRC Joint DTP Symposium which concretely supported the career development of students and Early Career Researchers from across the UK.

What does your local neuroscience community need to support its innovation, collaboration, growth and development? If you're a BNA member, contact your Local Group Representative, who can work with you and your colleagues to plan a project and make your idea a reality with up to £1000 in BNA funding.

After a delicious environmentally-sustainable lunch provided by our Birmingham hosts Dr Dan Fulton and Dr Hannah Botfield, LGRs and LGSRs broke into small groups for a workshop led by Dr Marja Main (Edinburgh LGR), Fiona and Dani Wijesinghe (BNA Membership & Communities Manager), devising effective methods for:

• communicating the value of BNA membership to neuroscientists who may not already be BNA members,
• communicating local neuroscience research to those outside of the university, and
• communicating the views and priorities of local neuroscience communities to the national BNA leadership.

The full group then came back together and spoke about how to engage Early Career Researchers in our Local Group activity, so that they can make use of BNA resources to devise projects that support their specific career development needs. Our newly elected Student and Early Careers Representative Bethany Facer (Liverpool LGSR) will soon be convening a working group to work on these questions at a national level.

After wrapping up the day with an exciting session led by BNA Chief Executive Dr Laura Ajram on how members can use the BNA to strengthen their grant applications, participants headed home (after a short stop at the bar for some much-needed relaxation) with busy notebooks and open ears. The next four years will see our network of BNA members and its local leadership go from strength to strength.

LGRs and LGSRs gather in Birmingham to represent their local communities at the BNA Local Groups Forum

If you could change one thing about neuroscience in your local area, what would it be? Do your colleagues and others in your local neuroscience community feel similarly? By joining your BNA Local Group and working with your Local Group Representatives to devise a strategy and secure project funding, together you can drive local change, and take collective ownership over the future of neuroscience where you are. Update your BNA account settings now!

The BNA extends special thanks to Drs Dan Fulton and Hannah Botfield for arranging the BNA Local Groups Forum 2024, and to Dr Volko Straub for his past four years of service as BNA Local Groups Coordinator.