Welcome to our new blog – The Auditorium. We are the Research Culture & Researcher Development Team, within Research Services, at the University of Glasgow, and we have created this blog so that we can discuss what we do, and what we think about.

As active members of our professional communities we wanted to share the ideas and influences on our learning designs openly with you. We will offer you insight into our educational practice, how we decide what to work on, and who to work with. We, and our invited guest writers, will also use this space to offer opinions, guidance, ideas, tools, and resources related to researcher education and development.

We chose the name ‘The Auditorium’ as it relates to the teaching spaces we inhabit. The lecture theatres, seminar rooms, and zoom spaces we welcome researchers into.

We also liked the idea of an Auditorium as a place that amplifies voices, not only ours, but voices from the full range of different people and professions who contribute to researcher development at Glasgow. This includes other teams and services, the Colleges and the Grad Schools, and most importantly the researchers, their supervisors, and their PIs. We are part of an ecology of partners, and we want to reflect this though our writing here. We reject the deficit model that positions researchers as empty vessels to be filled with ‘development’, and we value what researchers bring to conversations about their working culture and their professional development.

And we also place value on the ‘audit’ part of the work Auditorium. We are committed to reflection, review, and enhancement of our work, to make sure we always offer contemporary programmes and initiatives. We open ourselves up to feedback and input, through this blog space.

On this blog you can expect a wide range of posts about research cuture, researcher education and professional development. We post under our six UofG priority culture-focused themes for development, which are underpinned by our Research Strategy, and our Research Culture Statement. These themes are:

Career Direction: We support researchers to reflect on their career journey so far, and make the most of their time at UofG by making active choices for their future direction.

Connection and Belonging: We facilitate the building and vitality of researcher communities and networks. We know these are critical to wellbeing as well as to academic progress.

Researcher Integrity: We are committed to providing an environment that ensures all researchers feel safe and can conduct their research to the highest quality standards. We support the development of the specialist knowledge and behaviours that underpin this commitment.

Engaged Communication: In a connected world, being able to communicate well with a range of audiences is essential. We help our researchers to be heard.

Constructive Conversations: A good conversation is a powerful learning tool. We help our researchers to access the people they need, to talk about the things most important to them.

Innovative Ideas: Whether our researchers big ideas relate to future research projects, new policies, products and services, or ways they can change UofG for the better, we support their development.

We look forward to discussing our work with you!