All Researcher Development Programme (RDP) courses

Researcher Development has moved to Inkpath.

In order to find scheduled training, book places and record your attendance, head over to Inkpath, select 'single sign-on' and log in with Raven.

Click here to Launch Inkpath

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. This 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.

Ph.D. research journey can present many challenges in our ability to maintain work life balance and work sustainably while progressing towards our goals. Addressing the challenges of work-life balance and sustainability in the context of a Ph.D. is crucial for the well-being and effectiveness of researchers. This interactive session aims to create a space for researchers to hack key issues for developing sustainable academic practices and offers a toolkit of reliable, evidence-based strategies for wellbeing management.

This workshop focuses on the basics of teaching and facilitating seminars in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. It is ideal for participants with little to no seminar teaching experience.  

You will learn how to structure a seminar, harnessing an array of design methods, thought-provoking questioning techniques and effective communication skills, and the importance of reflective practice. Likewise, you will learn how to surmount challenges associated with engagement, including with seminar-related reading materials and any other pre-sessional work.  

By the end of this workshop, you will have heightened confidence in designing and delivering compelling seminars that rely on pedagogical principles for creating an inclusive, engaging and cooperative learning space.  

This workshop aligns with D1 and A1 & A2 of the HEAs Professional Standards Framework (PSF), I.e., with the ‘Associate Fellow’ level. This workshop does not result in recognition or a qualification but can be considered as part of an application. 

Team working and leadership are essential skills of the modern researcher as more projects are multidisciplinary collaborations. They are also high on the skills requirement list for most employers outside academia. However, the nature of higher education focuses on individual work so many researchers starting their career find that they have little experience or knowledge of how to work as a team member or contribute to leadership.

In this workshop, we will explore fundamental aspects of team working, including why having people in your teams who think and behave differently to you is essential for a successful team.

We will look at theories around teamwork, including work by Will Schutz, John Adair, and Bruce Tuckman, with a main focus on Belbin Team Roles, which is a globally recognised tool.

At the end of this workshop, you will be able to understand:

• Why teams don’t need well rounded people
• Why team members don’t need to work on their areas of weakness
• How conflict in team members’ working styles can be turned to an advantage
• Why our expectations of team members (including leaders) can set them up to fail
• Why, when choosing people to work with, we need to look beyond their eligibility, and consider their suitability

Please note that this workshop does not include Belbin assessments or Belbin reports.

Learn how to create and deliver an effective presentation.

Most postgraduate researchers benefit from giving presentations about their research by gaining feedback, sharing their ideas and/or findings, and raising their profile in the research community. Therefore, learning how to present your research effectively is an important skill to develop during the course of your doctorate.

An interactive and participative session that looks at the root of great communication covering:

• Levels of Listening
• Listening to understand
• Asking Great Questions
• Giving and Receiving Feedback

This session will involve group work, work in pairs and some time for individual reflection.

Storytelling is the secret weapon that can help you get on in life, from demonstrating leadership and establishing a reputation, to motivating a team, persuading and influencing, and attracting new business and partnerships.

It’s a deeply human trait to love stories. They account for about two thirds of conversations, according to research, play on our emotions, light up our minds, and are far more likely to be remembered than mere facts.

Which makes good storytelling the most powerful method of marketing, raising profile, and pure and simple selling, whether it’s your agenda, your business, or your vision.

From the hook of how to start you story, to an emotional ending, and everything in between, this high energy, highly interactive workshop covers all you need to know to become a scintillating storyteller.

Time management is just something you do... who would spend precious time on getting better at it?

You might already be the most effective person you know, or you might instead be struggling under a pile of to-do lists and missed deadlines. Whatever your situation, this online toolkit will give you some new ideas to think about and try out. Each tool provides some information and examples, then sets you the challenge of seeing if it works for you in real life.

Outcomes

• Understand how to use several different time management techniques
• Identify which of these help you to be more effective
• Feel more in control of your time

How to Access the Course

You will need to use the following enrolment key at the link below: TMT_21on

Enrol onto the Time Management Toolkit (Moodle)

A CRSid / Raven password is needed to access this online course. If you don't have one, please get in touch at researcher.development@admin.cam.ac.uk.

This workshop is designed to help PhD students optimize their time and increase their productivity. In this workshop, we will explore a variety of time management strategies and tools to help you prioritize your tasks, meet deadlines, and achieve your academic goals.

We will guide you through practical exercises that will help you identify your priorities, create realistic schedules, and manage your workload efficiently. We will also cover essential tools and techniques for managing your time effectively, such as the Pomodoro Technique, time-blocking, and goal setting.

By the end of this workshop, you will have a comprehensive toolkit for managing your time more effectively, reducing stress, and enhancing your overall productivity.

When we talk about turning a thesis into a ‘book’, we are really talking about a ‘monograph’. In keeping with the etymological sense of the word, a monograph is generally considered a written work that focuses on one specialised subject with a view to contributing original insight and knowledge.

Given a doctoral thesis – particularly in the arts, humanities and social sciences – is a dedicated study on one specialised topic or area of research, it stands to reason that it is a kind of proto-monograph. This course is concerned with turning a proto-monograph into a fully-fledged and published monograph, i.e. a book. The aim, therefore, is to familiarise students with the process of, and the various issues involved with, turning their PhD thesis into a published monograph.

Researcher Development has moved to Inkpath.

In order to find scheduled training, book places and record your attendance, head over to Inkpath, select 'single sign-on' and log in with Raven.

Click here to Launch Inkpath

Striking the balance between good writing and following best academic practice through referencing can be a bit of a headache. In this session, we will demonstrate how referencing can help you structure your work as well as sharing techniques to support you in keeping your writing process flowing without any extra stress when it comes to submitting your thesis. We will provide a live demonstration of the reference management tool Zotero to give you an idea of how tools can do some of the heavy lifting for you.

Welcome to Cambridge! This day-long workshop will provide incoming doctoral students with essential information and resources that will help them navigate the complexities of doctoral research, foster productive relationships, and take advantage of the educational and developmental opportunities available to them during their studies. You will have the opportunity to hear from Postgraduate Researcher Development team, Careers, Public Engagement, Research Integrity, Wellbeing, and the University Library.

This is also an excellent opportunity to meet fellow PhD students from outside their Department/Faculty. By the end of this session, students should feel more settled and confident in taking their first steps into doctoral research.

Please note, this event is intended to complement local Departmental and Faculty inductions and also RD workshops such as ‘Starting your PhD’ or ‘Working with your Supervisor’.

Writing at postgraduate level isn’t simply about, well, writing – it’s a complex cognitive activity which involves you juggling a whole host of balls at once. But one of the main reasons it’s hard is that at postgraduate level you’re basically creating knowledge, which is no mean feat. Even seasoned academics find it challenging – they have just developed a range of strategies and coping mechanisms to make it that bit more manageable.

So, in this session, we’ll first start by taking a small step back, just to consider why it’s hard – before taking a look at a couple of things that experience has shown me it is helpful to focus on right from the start so as to make the whole process that bit easier: firstly, the fact that English is a writer-responsible language (and we’ll be looking at what this is, why it’s important (especially if English isn’t your first language), and what this means for written communication in English); and secondly, and in some ways stemming from the first point, the importance of structure – at all levels and in all things.

The student-supervisor relationship is vital for success in all research degree programmes. However, the exact role of the supervisor is often unclear and sometimes it may feel as though you are not getting the support you need. This can be frustrating for students and supervisors alike, and can lead to a negative doctoral experience.

Researcher Development has moved to Inkpath.

In order to find scheduled training, book places and record your attendance, head over to Inkpath, select 'single sign-on' and log in with Raven.

Click here to Launch Inkpath

Writing at postgraduate level

In this series of four sessions we’ll be taking an in-depth look at various aspects of writing at postgraduate level. Each session will be 90mins, with 30mins at the end for questions and discussion.

Whilst they have been designed as a set of sessions, with each building on from the previous, the individual sessions have been designed to be standalone – which means that you can attend the whole series or just those that particularly speak to you.

Workshop 3: Reader Empathy. Its not just about the writing – its writing for your readers

The primary focus of most writing training is on honing your skills as a writer – and for obvious reasons. But what tends to be overlooked is the reason why we are writing – namely, to be read. Text is generated to be read by a reader and as soon as it has been submitted, it belongs to the reader, a reader who has no recourse to question the writer. This is why the monological form of writing is difficult, as the writer has to structure the text and articulate the content in such a way that they will hopefully be received by the reader as the writer intended it, and so it has to be clearly articulated.

And this is precisely an aspect that novice postgraduate writers often struggle with – the research has been conducted and it is now simply a case of getting it down on the page. As one academic I have spoken to about this put it, they tend to write with no empathy for the reader, thereby forcing the reader to do the hard work of trying to elicit from what they have said what it is that they are actually trying to say. Being widely read has long been known as good training for a writer – but explicitly thinking of the reader when constructing text is often overlooked, when in fact it proffers a useful frame through which to view one’s own writing.

So, in this third session we’ll be looking at the concept of reader empathy and why it’s important to think of your reader when writing. We’ll look at a range of strategies to help you to do this: from the macro perspective of the structure of the entire document, through rhetorical templates, right down to where the reader expects information to be in a sentence.

The other workshops in the series are:

Workshop 1: Why writing at postgraduate level is hard
Workshop 2: The Universitys criterion clearly written - what this means
Workshop 4: The true secret to clarity - multi-level editing

Writing at postgraduate level

In this series of four sessions we’ll be taking an in-depth look at various aspects of writing at postgraduate level. Each session will be 90mins, with 30mins at the end for questions and discussion.

Whilst they have been designed as a set of sessions, with each building on from the previous, the individual sessions have been designed to be standalone – which means that you can attend the whole series or just those that particularly speak to you.

Workshop 4: The true secret to clarity - Multi-level editing

Having got everything down on paper in a first draft is a huge achievement, but this is where the work really starts in the editing – refining the structure, the content, and the language to strengthen your argument and the clarity of your articulation. Academics I’ve spoken to say that on average they go through between 10-20 rounds of edits in their own writing, with the lower end being more in the sciences disciplines and the higher figure more in the arts and humanities disciplines.

In this final session, we’ll be looking at editing from a macro, through the mezzo, and down to the micro level, from the bigger picture of how the entire document hangs together, through how to keep the argument on track at the mezzo level, and then right down to individual paragraphs and sentence, where we’ll be looking at such features as hedging, emphasis, passive voice, and nominalisations.

The other workshops in the series are:

Workshop 1: Why writing at postgraduate level is hard
Workshop 2: The Universitys criterion clearly written - what this means
Workshop 3: Reader Empathy. Its not just about the writing - its writing for your reader

Writing at postgraduate level

In this series of four sessions we’ll be taking an in-depth look at various aspects of writing at postgraduate level. Each session will be 90mins, with 30mins at the end for questions and discussion.

Whilst they have been designed as a set of sessions, with each building on from the previous, the individual sessions have been designed to be standalone – which means that you can attend the whole series or just those that particularly speak to you.

Workshop 2: The Universitys criterion clearly written – what this means

If you’ve ever had a look at the Cambridge Student webpages as to the requirements of postgraduate writing submitted for assessment, you’ll see that the University has only one criterion – and this is that it is ‘clearly written.’ At first glance, this seems both explicit and unequivocal as clarity in all its forms is surely the bedrock not only of postgraduate study, but of academia itself. Yet on further scrutiny, whilst there may be an instinctive consensus that this is a cardinal criterion for postgraduate writing, when it comes to defining what this actually means and how we are supposed to attain it, the matter is far less perspicuous. And indeed, clearly written is not simply an assessment criterion at Cambridge, as the vast majority of guides to academic writing rhapsodise about clarity as an assumed mutually acknowledged objective. Yet rarely is this criterion unpacked.

And so in this second session, we’ll be looking at doing just that – by considering what academics see as the central tenet of ‘clearly written’, namely, argument, and also in what ways the rhetorical expectations of ‘clearly written’ in English may differ from the expectations in other languages.

The other workshops in the series are:
Workshop 1: Why writing at postgraduate level is hard
Workshop 3: Reader Empathy. Its not just about the writing - its writing for your reader
Workshop 4: The true secret to clarity - multi-level editing

Writing at postgraduate level

In this series of four sessions we’ll be taking an in-depth look at various aspects of writing at postgraduate level. Each session will be 90mins, with 30mins at the end for questions and discussion.

Whilst they have been designed as a set of sessions, with each building on from the previous, the individual sessions have been designed to be standalone – which means that you can attend the whole series or just those that particularly speak to you.

Workshop 1: Why writing at postgraduate level is hard

In this first session, we’ll be taking a step back and reflecting for a moment on what it is that you’re actually doing at PG level, as this is far more than simply writing. You’re engaging in a complex, cognitive process of knowledge creation. And so when the writing gets hard, its useful just to remember that what you are doing is far more complicated than just writing – as writing is something that you can all already do and to a pretty high degree of ability. In fact, as we will see, there are numerous factors involved in writing at this level, from the epistemological assumptions of your discipline, through how we construct argument, before we even get to how we construct an articulate sentence – and we’ll be looking at all of these.

The other workshops in the series are:
Workshop 2: The Universitys criterion clearly written - what this means
Workshop 3: Reader Empathy. Its not just about the writing - its writing for your reader
Workshop 4: The true secret to clarity - multi-level editing

This session brings together ‘Writing your first-year report’ with a dedicated time and space for getting started with actually writing that report.

The first two hours will focus on equipping you with the essential skills to excel in preparing your First Year Report, specifically by looking at:

• Mastering Report Composition: Learn how to structure and present your First Year Report effectively, adhering to the University's guidelines and ensuring clarity in conveying your research objectives and initial findings.

• Enhancing Writing Skills: Develop strong academic writing abilities, ensuring coherence, and demonstrating the significance of your research in your chosen field of study.

• Engaging with Research Methodologies: Explore diverse research methodologies relevant to your discipline, and research positionality in enabling you to select the most suitable approach for your study.

• Navigating the Upgrading Process: Gain valuable insights into the requirements for successful upgrading to a full PhD candidate and receive guidance on how to meet these criteria.

The second half of the session will run as a writing retreat, wrapping up at 4pm. The retreat half will be structured according to your ‘writing objectives’ which you will develop with the course lead.

Join us for an intensive and productive writing retreat tailored exclusively for doctoral scholars like you. Enjoy uninterrupted writing time, expert guidance from mentors, and a collaborative environment to refine your research. Take a day to focus solely on your dissertation or thesis projects, right here on campus. Don't miss this opportunity to enhance your productivity and connect with fellow scholars!

Join us for an intensive and productive writing retreat tailored exclusively for doctoral scholars like you. Enjoy uninterrupted writing time, expert guidance from mentors, and a collaborative environment to refine your research. Take a day to focus solely on your dissertation or thesis projects, right here on campus. Don't miss this opportunity to enhance your productivity and connect with fellow scholars!

Getting off to a strong start in your PhD is vital, and at the University of Cambridge, we recognize the significance of your First Year Report in shaping your academic progress. This course is designed exclusively for PhD students in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, focusing on equipping you with the essential skills to excel in preparing your First Year Report - a pivotal step toward upgrading to a full PhD candidate.

Don't Miss This Opportunity:

Preparing your First Year Report is a crucial milestone in your academic career. Enrol in this course to receive expert guidance and support that will set you on the path to excellence. Secure your spot now and equip yourself with the skills to navigate this essential phase of your PhD journey at the University of Cambridge.