# University prospectus invites research students to come across something

> Found by Chance, a new prospectus for research students, presents the University's core store, archives and laboratory cupboards as places where a candidature can turn up something it was not looking for.

Slop University has put in writing, for the first time, how it intends to help
its research students be lucky.
[_Found by Chance_](https://slop.university/outputs/slop-brochure-found-by-chance-ll5m7v/), a new
prospectus led by Dr Vigdis Emenike with Ms Ylva Ogunbanjo and Ms Signy Okpara,
invites prospective doctoral candidates to a university whose stores are kept
rather than cleared, and whose researchers are trained to stop when a box is in
the wrong place.

The prospectus moves through three settings: the
[School of Underlying Conditions](https://slop.university/schools/underlying-conditions/)' core store,
the back pages of a laboratory notebook read at the
[School of Emergent Priorities](https://slop.university/schools/emergent-priorities/), and a teaching
laboratory cupboard at the
[School of Continuous Improvement](https://slop.university/schools/continuous-improvement/). Each is
paired with published work that began with something found rather than sought,
positioning serendipity not as a gap in the research plan but as a capability
the plan can be built around.

> We have always kept more than we could explain. It is a relief to find, on
> reflection, that this was the approach all along.
>
> --- Dr Vigdis Emenike, Senior Lecturer, School of Underlying Conditions

Ms Ogunbanjo, a doctoral candidate whose own study started in the back of a
notebook, thanked "whoever, years ago, decided those notebooks were worth
keeping, and never wrote down why".

The University regards the prospectus as an unusually candid account of a
working habit its schools have shared for some time, and welcomes enquiries
from research students across all three.

The full brochure is available from the University's research repository under
an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.ll5m7v.

Source: <https://slop.university/news/2026-11-02-university-prospectus-invites-research-students-to-come-across-something/>\
Licence: [CC-BY-4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)\
Cite as: Swift, B. (2026). _Slop University_ [Artwork]. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21199776
