Researcher Development Programme (RDP) course timetable

Museums and collections are so much more than the objects they house. They are places of research, education and engagement, and they are open to members of the public in ways that departments and colleges are not. They can allow researchers to reach a range of diverse audiences. The session will be delivered with the University of Cambridge Museums.

This course gives an introduction into how to engage with the public through media. It will cover the differing types of media, what makes research newsworthy, how to work with the communications office to gain media coverage, what to expect from an interview (print, pre-recorded, live) and how to communicate well in interviews. It will be delivered jointly with the University Communications team.

This course will be facilitated online via Zoom.

Dr Elizabeth English is offering a new Online WEEKLY MEDITATION Q&A session, Tuesdays at 1.30pm. Please visit Mindfulness at Cam for more information and updates.

The Meditation sessions are not designed as a course, they are weekly one-off sessions, and you are welcome attend as many (or as few) as you wish.

Class will be approximately 30 mins. See times and dates below.

View the Mindfulness Meditation Timetable here

This is the first of two workshops designed to develop your understanding of the technicalities and the process of getting your research published.

In this workshop, we examine the technical aspects of writing up your research in a format appropriate for publication. You will learn about the importance of following journal guidelines and house style, and the value of using a clear structure to frame your paper. You will also receive guidance on how to produce clear writing in a register appropriate for the readership.

It is possible to attend this course as an individual workshop, although we would encourage you to attend the second workshop in the series Getting published II: Impact and Peer-review.

Please note: The course does not offer bespoke or 1-1 support for manuscript preparation.

Do you get the results you want from your communication with others at work? Are you able to talk with confidence in meetings and interviews? Do you have a high level of impact when speaking in public?

This individually focused and completely confidential one-to-one coaching session will help you refine your presentation skills, help you speak more confidently as an emerging leader in your research field, and develop new approaches to your communication in a wide range of professional situations.

Constructive feedback will give you insight into your speaking style, how you come across to others, and how well your ideas are communicated. Coaching will focus on your individual requirements ranging from practical points about elocution and vocal projection, to holding the attention of a room, to structuring a compelling presentation.

This course will give an introduction to Public and Patient Involvement. You will find out about local support available in the region to help plan, deliver and build PPI into research, that will improve research for patients and services users and carers. This course will be delivered by Dr Amanda Stranks, PPI/E and Communications Strategy Lead NIHR Cambridge BRC Communications and PPI/E Department.

Do you get the results you want from your communication with others at work? Are you able to talk with confidence in meetings and interviews? Do you have a high level of impact when speaking in public?

This individually focused and completely confidential one-to-one coaching session will help you refine your presentation skills, help you speak more confidently as an emerging leader in your research field, and develop new approaches to your communication in a wide range of professional situations.

Constructive feedback will give you insight into your speaking style, how you come across to others, and how well your ideas are communicated. Coaching will focus on your individual requirements ranging from practical points about elocution and vocal projection, to holding the attention of a room, to structuring a compelling presentation.

Do you get the results you want from your communication with others at work? Are you able to talk with confidence in meetings and interviews? Do you have a high level of impact when speaking in public?

This individually focused and completely confidential one-to-one coaching session will help you refine your presentation skills, help you speak more confidently as an emerging leader in your research field, and develop new approaches to your communication in a wide range of professional situations.

Constructive feedback will give you insight into your speaking style, how you come across to others, and how well your ideas are communicated. Coaching will focus on your individual requirements ranging from practical points about elocution and vocal projection, to holding the attention of a room, to structuring a compelling presentation.

RD Live brings Researcher Development to life with sessions featuring a specialist presentation, discussion and Q&A. Hosted by the RD team fortnightly via Zoom, each event focuses on a particular theme relevant to postgraduate students such as re-planning your PhD, funding & registration, and more.

For this event, we are joined by Clare Trowell, Marshal Librarian at the University of Cambridge. The focus on Accidental Plagiarism, Self-Plagiarism and techniques for avoiding both.

Do you get the results you want from your communication with others at work? Are you able to talk with confidence in meetings and interviews? Do you have a high level of impact when speaking in public?

This individually focused and completely confidential one-to-one coaching session will help you refine your presentation skills, help you speak more confidently as an emerging leader in your research field, and develop new approaches to your communication in a wide range of professional situations.

Constructive feedback will give you insight into your speaking style, how you come across to others, and how well your ideas are communicated. Coaching will focus on your individual requirements ranging from practical points about elocution and vocal projection, to holding the attention of a room, to structuring a compelling presentation.

Do you get the results you want from your communication with others at work? Are you able to talk with confidence in meetings and interviews? Do you have a high level of impact when speaking in public?

This individually focused and completely confidential one-to-one coaching session will help you refine your presentation skills, help you speak more confidently as an emerging leader in your research field, and develop new approaches to your communication in a wide range of professional situations.

Constructive feedback will give you insight into your speaking style, how you come across to others, and how well your ideas are communicated. Coaching will focus on your individual requirements ranging from practical points about elocution and vocal projection, to holding the attention of a room, to structuring a compelling presentation.

Do you get the results you want from your communication with others at work? Are you able to talk with confidence in meetings and interviews? Do you have a high level of impact when speaking in public?

This individually focused and completely confidential one-to-one coaching session will help you refine your presentation skills, help you speak more confidently as an emerging leader in your research field, and develop new approaches to your communication in a wide range of professional situations.

Constructive feedback will give you insight into your speaking style, how you come across to others, and how well your ideas are communicated. Coaching will focus on your individual requirements ranging from practical points about elocution and vocal projection, to holding the attention of a room, to structuring a compelling presentation.

This course will cover how to use Social Media tools for Public Engagement. The course will be delivered by the Social Media and AV team.

Please not that these courses are only for University of Cambridge students (undergraduate and postgraduate), who are affiliated to a Cambridge college.

This course will be facilitated online via Zoom.

This is one of four "Mindfulness Workshop" sessions. You can attend one - four of these sessions as you wish, in any order. Although not designed as a course, the four sessions are complimentary and cover different aspects of mindfulness.

Please do not book on to the same session twice.

View complete timetable here

The other sessions are as follows:
Mindfulness for Exams 2: Improving Attention
Mindfulness for Exams 3: Better Sleep
Mindfulness for Exams 4: Productive Decisions

Join Forward Prize nominee David Cain (2019), for a training session that explores responses to research through creative writing. This training will develop creative ways by which you can engage with new and existing audiences, enabling you to be more confident in developing, and sharing, creative writing responses to your area of research.

The session will introduce creative writing for poetry and prose, and textual writing for exhibition / display. It will also discuss formats for delivery / performance.

A thorough awareness of issues relating to research ethics and research integrity are essential to producing excellent research. This session will provide an introduction to the ethical responsibilities of researchers at the University and explore issues of good research practice, research integrity and research misconduct. It will be interactive, using case studies to better understand key ethical issues and challenges in all areas.

The course will:

• explore the issue of research misconduct in academia and facilitate discussion of why and how it occurs
• explain the University and national expectations around research integrity and examine how this effects researchers
• discuss some of the challenges to the integrity of research and ask what individuals, groups and institutions can do to tackle them
• introduce the University’s research ethics system

The course will be delivered by the Research Governance Team in the Research Strategy Office.

This course will be facilitated online via Zoom.

Dr Elizabeth English is offering a new Online WEEKLY MEDITATION Q&A session, Tuesdays at 1.30pm. Please visit Mindfulness at Cam for more information and updates.

The Meditation sessions are not designed as a course, they are weekly one-off sessions, and you are welcome attend as many (or as few) as you wish.

Class will be approximately 30 mins. See times and dates below.

View the Mindfulness Meditation Timetable here

You are beginning one of the most exciting, yet challenging programme of your academic career. You have entered a new lab, with a new supervisor, new lab colleagues and a new project. Where do you start? How do you establish productive working relationships, get up to speed with literature and establish a project that will be worthy of a PhD at the end? This short workshop will explore what it means to do a PhD, think about how to establish meaningful student-supervisor relationships and plan for a productive PhD project.

Across all AHSS disciplines (and within) there are varying views of what research is. Though not a definitive means by which to conceptualize research, this course offers Thomas Kuhn’s idea of the ‘research paradigm’ as a heuristic and expedient entry point into key terms and concepts often encountered by research students and the tactic assumptions underpinning them. This can and often does result in an ability to understand the significance of one’s own research, the research of others and the broader intellectual context in which both are situated.

Join Forward Prize nominee David Cain (2019), for a training session that explores responses to research through creative writing. This training will develop creative ways by which you can engage with new and existing audiences, enabling you to be more confident in developing, and sharing, creative writing responses to your area of research.

The session will introduce creative writing for poetry and prose, and textual writing for exhibition / display. It will also discuss formats for delivery / performance.

Research in the 21st century is global, and research teams are intercultural. 35% of Cambridge research students are from outside the EU; and postdocs are the most diverse group by nationality, representing almost 100 countries. This diversity is one of the University’s biggest strengths. Yet intercultural communication is not without its pitfalls and misunderstandings. It takes conscious discipline to think about one’s own cultural assumptions and to try to make sense of others'.

This two hour workshop will give you some tools to help identify where national culture might be having an influence on your professional and social interactions, where common misunderstandings can occur, and how to address potential challenges, especially when the majority of it is now happening online. The content of the session is informed by research form intercultural studies and refers to culture as a framework of shared values, attitudes and behaviours. It explores the nature of generalisations and the relationship between culture and personal values.

You are beginning one of the most exciting, yet challenging programme of your academic career. You have entered a new lab, with a new supervisor, new lab colleagues and a new project. Where do you start? How do you establish productive working relationships, get up to speed with literature and establish a project that will be worthy of a PhD at the end? This two hour workshop will explore what it means to do a PhD, think about how to establish meaningful student-supervisor relationships and plan for a productive PhD project.

This course will be facilitated online via Zoom.

Dr Elizabeth English is offering a new Online WEEKLY MEDITATION Q&A session, Tuesdays at 1.30pm. Please visit Mindfulness at Cam for more information and updates.

The Meditation sessions are not designed as a course, they are weekly one-off sessions, and you are welcome attend as many (or as few) as you wish.

Class will be approximately 30 mins. See times and dates below.

View the Mindfulness Meditation Timetable here

Getting published is a central part of being a researcher. Peer-reviewed publications allow researchers to communicate their research to the broader research community, and thus, make a contribution to the body of work within their field.

This workshop is divided into two interrelated components. The first concerns the question of ‘high impact’, whilst the second concerns the process of peer-review and manuscript preparation.

It is possible to attend this as an individual workshop, although we would recommend that you try to attend the series starting with Getting published I: Writing for publication

Please note: This course does not offer bespoke or 1-1 support for manuscript preparation.