St John's Poster Competition
Poster Competition 2024
St John's Poster Competition 2024
Competition Entry Requirements:
St John's is delighted to be launching our Poster Competition for 2024. The competition is open to all UK-based prospective applicants: UK-based students in Year 12 (England/Wales) / S5 (Scotland) / Y13 (Northern Ireland) or UK-based students who will be submitting their undergraduate applications by the 15th October 2024 UCAS deadline.
You need to undertake a research project on an academic topic or question that interests you (from any subject area and which relates to the competition theme) and create an academic research poster about it. The theme of this year's competition is SILVER. Your submission must relate to this theme and we encourage creative interpretations of the theme.
Each submitted entry must be produced by an individual student and cannot be the result of group project work. Each student can only submit one entry.
Each submitted entry should include the following:
- An academic research poster, containing academic references
- A separate bibliography
It is recommended to format the poster on 1 slide in PowerPoint. Please edit the slide’s size in the Design tab, clicking on Slide Size, then Custom Slide Size: it is recommended to select A3, ensuring that width and height measurements are 26.67cm and 35.56cm. Your poster can be landscape or portrait orientation. Please ensure that any images or figures included on your poster are cited if they are taken from other sources, and have brief explanatory captions. Once you have finished your poster in PowerPoint, export/save the file as a PDF before submitting.
The bibliography should also be submitted as a PDF.
You need to submit your entry (poster and bibliography) by 4pm on Monday 5th August 2024. Please click here for the online form to submit your poster and bibliography.
Each submission will be judged by academics at St John's College researching/teaching in your submission's academic area(s). All entrants will receive individual feedback about their submission in September 2024 and there will be prizes in the form of National Book Tokens for the best submissions.
Guidance and Support for Competition Entrants:
For advice and guidance on academic referencing and producing a bibliography, please click here.
We will be running optional drop-in sessions in July for poster competition entrants to ask questions and seek guidance with their projects. Please sign up for one of these Zoom sessions via this form.
For examples of previous years' winning submissions, as well as resources and videos to help you get started with your research poster, please see below.
Please get in touch with AccessOfficer@joh.cam.ac.uk if you have any questions about the competition or any issues when submitting your entry.
Research: Where to Start?
How to Research Online
Helpful links and resources
Super-curricular resource hubs from Cambridge and Oxford:
University of Cambridge Super-curricular Suggestions
Super-curricular Resource Hub from University College, Oxford
Useful guidance on creating and formatting academic research posters from Newcastle University
Advice and guidance on academic research skills e.g. referencing, effective academic reading and note-making:
Open Access research from Cambridge University:
Cambridge Digital Library – a database of digitised research and material from Cambridge
Cambridge University Research – latest news
Apollo - University of Cambridge Open Access Repository
Open access journals and search engines
Bio Med Central - open access journals in biomedicine, physical sciences, mathematics and engineering
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) - open access, peer-reviewed journals in all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and humanities
JSTOR - an open access platform for scholarship, primary sources, and research collections
NPJ Climate and Atmospheric Science - an open access journal covering the relevant physical, chemical and biological components of atmospheric and climate science
Open Library of the Humanities - an open access platform supporting academic journals from across the humanities subjects
Open Book Publishers - open access e-books
Additional Poster Preparation Advice (from The Challenger Society for Marine Science)
• A poster needs to be attractive, and draw attention to itself.
• A poster needs to be easily readable, and not just by someone standing really close to it. For the main text, take care to choose a clear type-face at sensible point size. Avoid long complex sentences.
• Avoid large slabs of text and overlong line-lengths; the optimal line-length for readability is considered to be 50–65 characters per line, including spaces. For consistent spacing between words, use unjustified text.
• Ensure your diagrams are large enough to be seen clearly, and that the line weights of graphs etc. aren’t too spindly.
• Ensure that you have explained your symbols and acronyms, and have put scales on figures if necessary.
• Aim to have no more than about five figures (diagrams and photos). Remember that a well-chosen image/visual can be worth a thousand words.
• Diagrams need to be close to the text that relates to them, or very easily located, and they should be accompanied by captions.
• Make use of colour to enliven the poster and help direct the reader where to look.
• Don’t be tempted into over-complicating the appearance of the poster, and obscuring your message.
• Try to convey why your research and your project is so exciting.
Winners' Gallery 2024
This poster "Quicksilver: To What Extent Does Special Relativity Explain His Abilities?" was awarded the prize for Best Poster Graphics


This poster "Silver-Carbon Interlayers in Solid-State Batteries" was awarded the prize for Best Communication
This poster "Silver and Cigars in Quantum Spin" was awarded the Best Overall for Science Submissions prize


This poster "Born without a Silver Spoon: An Examination of Healthcare Inequalities over a Lifetime" was awarded a Highly Commended prize for Research
This poster "Silver: The Medical Past, The Medical Present & The Medical Future" was awarded a Highly Commended prize for Research


This poster "The Economics of Early Modern Drama was awarded a Highly Commended prize for Topic Choice
This poster "Silver entangled - a partial analysis of the silver (9_11) knot" received the Chair of Judges' Award for Most Thought-Provoking Project


This poster "The Silver Soul: The warrior class in the myth of metals in Plato’s Republic" was the Best Overall for Humanities Submissions prize
This poster "The Silver Bullet for Cancer Treeatment" was awarded the prize for Best Poster Design


This poster "The Illusion of Meritocracy: Exposing Hidden Capitals Behind the Silver Spoon" was awarded a Highly Commended prize for Connection to Theme
This poster "Speech is Silver: The Enforceability of Oral Contracts" was awarded the prize for Best Project Narrative


This poster "Shining Solutions: Silver Ant Adaptations" was awarded the prize for Best Academic Research
Winners' Gallery 2023

St John's College Poster Competition 2023
To read about the 2023 Poster Competition and view the winning entries, please click here.
Winners' Gallery 2022
The 2022 theme was CYCLE, and we were delighted with the creative interpretation of this theme. Take a look below at some of the winning submissions.

This thoroughly researched and comprehensive poster project hugely impressed our judges. This submission was the Overall Winner for the 2022 competition.

This submission was an excellent interpretation of the competition's theme, presented in an interesting and accessible way. This poster was awarded the Research Prize in 2022.

This visually effective submission with excellent referencing was awarded the Best Poster prize for 2022.