Browse or search for courses

Getting things right is critical when working with human participants. Non-ethical research may put the participants at risk or damage the validity of your findings. Moreover, appropriate ethical reflection is a feature of high quality research and goes beyond an approval letter from a research ethics committee. Taking an ethics-by-numbers approach to ethical approval, without due reflection of the specifics concerns involved may lead you to unnecessarily restrict your research. It may also mean you’re less prepared to handle ongoing or unexpected ethical considerations e.g. decision-making in fieldwork or how best to interpret and disseminate data.

On this course, you will learn the principles underpinning ethical research and how to manage issues like seeking informed consent, recruiting vulnerable people, balancing participants’ interests with academic freedom and societal obligations, respecting participant autonomy and reacting to unexpected events. Using case studies and group discussion, this course will explore best practice for working with human participants for you to share your experiences and learn from others.

Following this course, you may also wish to attend the second course in this series, Ethics of Research involving Personal Data, which will be held on 9th December at 10am (register here: https://www.training.cam.ac.uk/opda/event/3687908).

The instructor is Dr Rhys Morgan, Research Governance and Integrity Officer, or Dr Sinead Healy, Research Governance Facilitator, of the Research Strategy Office (RSO).

The seminar will provide you with a roadmap of practical steps and issues to consider when submitting a research ethical application for review by a University research ethics committee. It will provide an overview of the research ethics structure at Cambridge and signpost the relevant guidelines and sources of support. It will take you through the application journey from who should apply for ethical review, how to prepare and submit an application to what factors research ethics committees consider during their review.

The instructor is Dr Rhys Morgan, Research Governance and Integrity Officer, or Dr Sinead Healy, Research Governance Facilitator, of the Research Strategy Office (RSO).

Have you ever faced any issues related to authorship within your research group or making a submission to a journal? - Who gets to be an author? - How do you start a conversation on authorship with your research team? - What approaches can be used to resolve an authorship problem? - How are mistakes handled in a published paper? - In what circumstances will a paper be retracted from a journal?

Publishing research, and getting fair credit for publishing, can lead to difficulties and pitfalls (especially if you’re unsure about how to best manage various aspects of the process).

Using case studies and group discussion, this course will explore best practice in authorship and publication from deciding how authorship of a paper is decided to managing the challenges that can arise when working with publishers or editors. Discussions will include ‘grey areas’, common issues and pitfalls, and you will be given the opportunity to share your experiences and perspectives.

The instructor is Dr Rhys Morgan, Research Governance and Integrity Officer, or Dr Sinead Healy of the Research Strategy Office (RSO).

A must-attend virtual session with information tailored to postdocs in Cambridge, whether University-based or employed by Colleges or Research Institutions.

At this event, you will be given information about:

Your contract Professional development and the Careers Service How to connect to the wider postdoc community at Cambridge You will also meet representatives from various University services who may be helpful to you while you are working in Cambridge.

Postdocs: Researcher Development & Support (one-to-one sessions)

The postdoc RD team are offering one-to-one meetings online for all postdocs. These meetings will be tailored to your individual needs and provide an opportunity to consider and discuss a variety of topics relating to learning, skills and personal development. This is not an exhaustive list but areas for discussion could include:

• Managing your time whilst working from home
• Collaborating effectively
• Maintaining resilience and coping strategies
• Reflecting on and identifying your key areas for development

Each meeting will last for up to 45 minutes and, given the present circumstances relating to Covid-19, will be conducted online using Teams.