During your doctorate you will develop a range of skills, knowledge and experience. These will be invaluable to you in completing your doctorate on time and in your future chosen career.

To complement your development we offer a range of free workshops , events and other resources through our Doctoral Development Programme.

As well as formal training, you should also consider as professional development other activities you undertake as part of your doctorate. These can be matched against the Researcher Development Framework (or RDF) and can provide evidence of many transferable skills. You should record these on your training record in SAMIS.

Workshops

We offer a variety of different workshops in the Doctoral Development Programme.

• Academic skills
  • Reading strategically
• Communication and engagement
  • Social media for researchers
  • Influence and negotiation
  • Presentations and confidence
  • Publishing
• Career development
  • Applying for jobs in and outside of academia
• Research methods
  • Introduction to qualitative research methods
• Writing essentials
  • Writing your Thesis
  • Critical writing
• Information skills and data management
  • Literature searching
  • Open research/open access
• Self-management
  • Time management
  • Imposter syndrome
  • Motivation
  • Productivity
• Project Management
• Supervision

Student-led activities

We offer a variety of different student-led activities throughout the year.

Doctoral Cafés:

These are for new and established doctoral students to take a break from their research and to meet other doctoral students from across the university. Don't worry if you are coming alone, our Doctoral Development Facilitators are there to help spark conversation and help you meet some new people.

Shut Up and Write:

We know that blocking out dedicated writing time can be hard, so once a month we offer Shut Up and Write sessions to help you focus on your writing in a supportive environment. You will be encouraged to set writing goals at the start of the session, and reflect on your progress as you go on. We have both in-person and online versions on these sessions.

PG Tips: Knowledge Exchange:

Connecting with other researchers about a shared topic can be difficult, so to help you do this our PGTips sessions are an opportunity for sharing knowledge, experiences and expertise on a chosen topic. Here you will network, build connections and dive into the world of multidisciplinary research. These sessions take online and occur monthly.