What is Postgraduate Researcher Development at UofG?
Our programmes and initiatives for PGRs at UofG are designed to enrich your skills and working relationships, foster your talents, and accelerate your professional prospects. They are underpinned by six priority themes:
- Career Direction
- Connection and Belonging
- Researcher Integrity
- Engaged Communication
- Constructive Conversations
- Innovative Ideas
These themes are strongly influenced by key strategic messages from the university and by the Vitae Researcher Development Framework (RDF) which is a nationally recognised tool supporting research career development. The RDF sets out the skills, attributes and behaviours expected of researchers.
6 Steps to Successfully Navigating Your Development
Step 1
You are in control of your development. Reflecting on your prior experience, considering what your career aspirations are, planning and setting goals can help you identify and select opportunities that support your development and align with your career stage, and aspirations.
Step 2
You can use the RDF to plan out your development. All of the Researcher Development Team’s PGR programmes and initiatives align to the RDF, as does the Annual Progress Review (APR) so you can use it to track your progress. Having a conversation about your development can help you identify areas that you wish to focus on.
Step 3
Be aware that you need to think broadly about how you develop, it’s not all about doing courses. Engaging with training, workshops and courses comprises the smaller part of the total development you will experience during your time at UofG.
Step 4
In complement to training, embedding and contextualising your learning comes though working with others in the UofG community via workshop discussions, networks, events, groups, mentoring, and peer-to-peer conversations. Find them all here
Step 5
The remaining, and very important part of your development is derived from direct experience in your field. Working with others, presenting, publishing, and collaborating all offer you learning experiences. Look all around you for development opportunities.
Step 6
Reflection on your progress, what you are learning, and what you need to learn is a very important part of the process. You can find support for reflecting on progress through conversations with your supervisor, your peers, mentors, your Graduate School contacts, and specialist services such as the Careers Service, or via a Writing Adviser.
An Introduction to PGR Development Opportunities
It's worth noting that your development opportunities are not all in one place and are not all accessed through one system! As a guide, you will need to:
- Be aware of your Graduate School’s requirements for PGR training and development: College of Arts requirements | MVLS requirements | COSE requirements | COSS requirements. Speak to your Graduate School contacts if you have questions.
- Complete the UofG mandatory courses.
- Choose what you need from the Researcher Development Team’s optional courses. (Here’s a handy guide on how to book them.)
- Engage with the Researcher Development Team’s self-paced learning (online courses).
- Keep an eye out for your Graduate School’s annual list of courses, published each autumn.
- Find specialist courses through the Library and IT Services.
- Know where to go for large repositories of online courses on a full variety of topics.
- Keep an eye out for courses, opportunities, mentoring or events offered through your funder or professional body or learned society.
You can discover how other researchers have used the RDF to plan and monitor their development on the Vitae Researcher Profiles webpage.