Category: Career Direction
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Mind Your Language: Managing career-related conversations with researchers
This is a Pathfinder Expert Voices post, by guest blogger Dr Holly Prescott, Researcher Careers Specialist, at the University of Birmingham “With my PI, there is this penalty for thinking about or going into industry…like, you are dead to me” (Hayter & Parker, 2019). If I could choose one quote from my reading around researcher…
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Academic career paths after the doctorate?
By Katrina Gardner, Careers Manager for Researchers Those of you seeking an academic career path will no doubt already understand that it is extremely competitive. There are very specific job requirements that you would be unlikely to encounter if you progressed in other popular professional roles. It is not simply a matter of proving your effectiveness in research…
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Career Development – Learning Widely
By Dr Rachel Chin, Researcher Development Project Officer for the Flourish programme. In the research community we are used to the concept of specialisms and to the idea of holding expertise in a single narrowly defined subject area. However, this is an approach that has always troubled me. In fact, I would like to argue…
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Why do we feel the need to pick sides? Breaking down invisible barriers between academia and industry
By Dr Elaine Gourlay*, Research Culture Specialist for Communities & Collegiality PhD fatigue is very real. So why does it still seem to come as such as surprise when doctoral candidates near the end of their PhD journey think “this academia thing ain’t for me”? This was most definitely my experience and I decided categorically…
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What to do when they ask for a ‘Teaching Statement’
By Katrina Gardner, Careers Manager for Researchers At universities across the UK, we have seen in recent years a welcome expansion in teaching-focused and teaching-only posts. This can include Lectureships (Learning, Teaching & Scholarship) and Teaching Fellow, and Teaching Associate roles, as well as Tutor posts. Many of you who love teaching will welcome this…
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Launching the UofG Fellow’s Network
By Dr Rachel Herries – Researcher Development Specialist for Research Staff, Dr Maria McPhillips – Head of Strategic Research Initiatives, and Dr Kay Guccione – Head of Research Culture and Researcher Development. Take a minute to imagine a good research leader. Perhaps you are imagining someone you know, someone you’ve met, or the person you…
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On the various benefits of internships
By Adam Gordon, PGR Communications Intern in the Research Culture and Researcher Development Team I didn’t expect to be an intern at 34. The word has strong connotations of coffee-making, sandwich-fetching, and the exploitation of free labour by large enterprises. Happily, none of these things are the case at UofG! As the PGR Communications Intern…
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Mutually Beneficial: PGR Internships in Higher Education
By Emily Hay, PGR Events Intern in the Research Culture and Researcher Development Team Whilst the term ‘internship’ may conjure up images of young team members running around getting coffee and breakfast for their seniors, doing arbitrary filing and generally being at everyone else’s beck and call, that’s no longer (necessarily) the case. In Higher…
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Championing our older ‘early career researchers’: an emerging network for peer support
By Dr Sam Oakley, Research Governance and Integrity Manager Our older PGRs and postdocs told us that sometimes communications and development opportunities did not land well with them, particularly those aimed at ‘early career researchers’ when some of them felt at a later stage in their personal career journey. We decided to explore these issues…
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PIs, the Concordat, and being excellent to each other
By Dr Kay Guccione, Head of Research Culture & Researcher Development As managers at the University of Glasgow we are all expected to support, develop and enable the people in our teams. As a manager myself, I understand that this is an act of balance, and that ensuring that the demands of the many projects,…
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Co-Design and Collaboration: Let our Research Staff Flourish
By Dr Rachel Chin, Researcher Development Project Officer Continuing our Postdoc Appreciation Week theme, we can share with you some big plans. We are about to open applications for the pilot of our new Research Staff Development framework – Flourish! In today’s academic world collaboration in research, research outputs, and events is increasingly expected and…
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To appreciate your postdocs, go beyond the superficial
By Dr Kay Guccione, Head of Research Culture and Researcher Development The Research Culture and Researcher Development Team are reflecting during this Postdoc Appreciation week, on what it really means to ‘appreciate’ our research staff. It’s been three years since the second iteration of the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers was published,…
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Practical steps to finding your new career – learning from our LinkedIn Chat
By Katrina Gardner, Careers Adviser for Researchers The University of Glasgow organises regular online and face-to-face networking activities to offer our researchers support and inspiration in assessing career choices and making progression. We want our colleagues to gain comprehensive insight into the many sectors that they can make linear career progression into, after their PhD…
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Thesis Mentoring: a route to supervisory good practice
By Dr Kay Guccione, Head of Research Culture & Researcher Development and Dr Jennifer Boyle, PGR Writing Adviser Research Staff play a vital role in the day-to-day support and development of doctoral researchers and with the right training and framing they can deliver thesis support that makes a big impact! The Thesis Mentoring programme has…
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Be The Change: designing impactful leadership development for PGRs
By Joanna Royle (Researcher Development Specialist for PGRs) with Chris Russell (My Consultants course lead) and Kevin Leomo (Postgraduate Leadership Programme participant and PGR Leader) It is graduation season: that wildly joyful time of year when we celebrate our postgraduate researchers who will go on to be leaders in scholarship, industry, policy, and society. Leadership…
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Translating the research on post-PhD career trajectories into practice
By Kay Guccione – Head of Research Culture and Researcher Development at the University of Glasgow, Kelsey Inouye – Senior Researcher at University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, Sarah Blackford – PhD Careers Specialist, and Ruth Winden – Careers with Research Consultant at the University of Leeds. In June 2022 the four of…
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Making Space for Engagement – Glasgow’s new Advanced Research Centre
Dr Ken Skeldon is Research Engagement Manager at the University of Glasgow The University of Glasgow’s Advanced Research Centre, or ARC for short was officially opened on 8 June and will soon be fully operational, providing 16,000 square metres of new research infrastructure over 5 floors and a new home for over 500 researchers. Interdisciplinarity…
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Praise and encouragement goes a long way towards building confidence in laboratory work
By Charlotte Slaymark, Biogeochemistry Technician and PhD Candidate, University of Glasgow Supervision may be the most important aspect of a postgraduate’s experience during their masters or PhD programme. Supervisors are there to teach, guide, develop, support, and empower postgraduates into becoming independent researchers and highly skilled people. The experience is formative, and it is likely…
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Forging collegial spaces for collaboration
By Dr Kay Guccione and Dr Sam Oakley, Researcher Development Team The Glasgow Crucible is an annual career development programme for emerging research leaders at the University of Glasgow. Named for the vessel involved in the steel making process, this multi-day intensive event supports 30 senior research staff and new academic staff to acquire the…
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A ‘Talent Lab’ for Research Staff
By Dr Rachel Herries, Researcher Development Specialist (Concordat Implementation), and designer of the Talent Lab for Research Staff. The University of Glasgow signed up to the Researcher Development Concordat in May 2020. If you aren’t sure what this it, it’s worth your time taking a look at this important document that sets out the conditions,…
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Writing a great reference, a guide for supervisors and PIs
By Katrina Gardner, Careers Manager for PGRs and Research Staff at the University of Glasgow. Katrina works closely with the Researcher Development Team to offer careers workshops and one-to-one consultations for researchers, as well as guidance for supervisors and PIs seeking to support their researchers. PIs and supervisors are asked regularly to write references for…
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PGRs are doing it for themselves: Peer2Peer training in the College of Social Sciences
By Dickon Copsey. Employability Officer within the College of Social Sciences where his role includes the coordination of the College Employability Programme. As Employability Officer in the College of Social Sciences, I have one of the best jobs in the University. My job is to find creative ways to support the prof dev of our…
The Auditorium 