Engage with Mentoring
Mentoring is a learning conversation that supports good quality thinking. It’s a simple concept, but also a skilled educational practice.
Whatever your career stage or future goals, mentoring brings a powerful and refreshing opportunity to connect to colleagues, talk things through with the benefit of new perspectives, navigate the demands of your role, and find your own best way forward. It’s often positioned as a problem solving-mechanism, yet it doesn’t have to be centred on problems. Regular opportunities to sit down with a mentor, think things through, plan and prioritise can mean you work proactively, anticipate and avoid issues, and keep up momentum in your professional life.
In addition to the mentoring support available in your Schools and Institutes, the Researcher Development team offers a suite of mentoring programmes for researchers.
Catalyst
Catalyst is a career and leadership mentoring programme designed specifically for research staff, where senior academic staff mentors can help you get the most out of your role.
Thesis Mentoring
The Thesis Mentoring programme pairs PGRs who are actively writing their thesis with a trained and experienced Thesis Mentor, who is a member of research staff. Thesis mentoring can be a valuable opportunity for research staff to get experience that prepares for future doctoral supervision.
Self Paced: How to Recruit Your Own Mentor
Find out more about how to choose, recruit and work with a mentor. This can be a valuable way to find a mentor who meets your career and professional development needs.
Visit the self-paced training resource
ECDP Mentoring
If you are an early career academic (new Lecturer or Research Fellow) on the Early Career Development Programme (ECDP), there is also a mentoring component.
Speak to an expert
Our Research Culture and Researcher Development mentoring experts Dr Kay Guccione and Dr Elaine Gourlay are available by email to discuss mentoring, to help you plan a local mentoring programme or event, or to join the Mentoring Programme Leaders’ Network