West Midlands Branch

The West Midlands Branch is one of 11 regional branches in England, and part of a wider network of IOP activity across our Nations including Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

We are a well-established and active branch, with a friendly, enthusiastic and diverse committee, organising and developing many activities within the region. We cover the areas of Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Birmingham.

Our activities

Lectures

We currently run four evening lecture centres based in:

Birmingham
Hereford and Worcester
Keele
Wolverhampton

In 2018-19, we delivered 26 popular lectures, given by excellent speakers from all around the country. The subjects covered ranged from bubbles to ghosts, medical to space research, gravitational waves, exotic particles, alternative energies and more.

The lectures were enjoyed by around 2,400 A-level students, GCSE students, teachers and members of the public, in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere with free refreshments included.

Current lecture programme

Download the Hereford and Worcester lecture programme 2021-22 (PDF, 667KB)
The Keele lecture programme for 2021-22 will follow
Download the Wolverhampton lecture programme 2021-22 (PDF, 7.62MB)

Outreach events

We organise or participate in regular outreach events, including:

Science Night and Space Day at the Hive in Worcester
Family Day, Next Generation Innovators Fair and Science in the Park in Malvern.

In May 2018, we collaborated with the University of Birmingham to organise a 'Physics in the City' event in the city's New Street. In total, we interacted with more than 3,000 members of the public, with fun demonstrations and physics-based experiments/knowledge of current fields.

Working with schools

Our branch interacts directly with schools by:

giving talks and demonstrations to all age groups on a variety of subjects
running electronic workshops
running after-school clubs
supporting projects such as physics and art.

Message from the Chair

"We are proud of our record so far but are always looking for new ideas, enthusiastic volunteers and physics communicators who want to get involved. We welcome enquiries from anyone interested in joining our committee."

Lynne Long, Chair of IOP West Midlands Branch

Branch committee

Chair	Mrs Lynne Long, MInstP
Secretary	Mr Michael Boden, MInstP
Treasurer	Mr John Beale, MInstP
Ordinary Member	Mrs Margaret Cross, MInstP
Ordinary Member	Dr Ruchi Gupta, MInstP
Ordinary Member	Mr Ian Kemp, MInstP
Ordinary Member	Dr Fabrice Laussy
Ordinary Member	Professor Konstantinos Nikolopoulos, MInstP
Ordinary Member	Dr Alan Smith, CSci CPhys FInstP
Ordinary Member	Mr Scott Walker, MInstP
Co-opted Member	Mrs Janet Hilton, CPhys MInstP

Branch events

View our West Midlands branch events.

Newsletters

Branch support co-ordinator

Katy Gibson: [email protected]

Contact details

Email: [email protected]