Category: Constructive Conversations
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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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Overcoming Imposterism
By Suzie Shapiro, PGR Mental Health Adviser “I’m a fraud – everyone is going to find out!” “Everyone could do a better job of this than me” “I don’t belong here” What’s going on? If any of the above sound familiar, you have likely experienced feelings of imposterism… and you would be in good company. […]
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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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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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People Make Research – recognising those who make a positive difference to our research culture.
By Kay Guccione, Head of Research Culture and Researcher Development, Chris Pearce, Vice Principal for Research and Knowledge Exchange and Miles Padgett, Academic Champion for Culture. Our city slogan tells us that People Make Glasgow, and in Research Services we believe that People Make Research. UofG’s People Make Research project launched for the first time […]
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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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Asking insightful questions, a core mentoring practice
By Kay Guccione, Head of Research Culture & Researcher Development I have been enjoying working with a range of different new mentors, on various schemes, in recent months. Part of their orientation to mentoring practice is introducing them to the use of ‘questioning’ as part of developing a facilitative coaching style. This helps mentors to develop, […]
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Getting started with supervising Masters projects
By Dr Stephanie Zihms, Lecturer in Researcher Development, University of the West of Scotland. I offer this post as an introduction to the process of supervising Masters Degree projects, and I will cover how to craft an appropriately sized project, build good working relationships, and ensure timely completion and reporting. It’s intended for all people new to supervising […]
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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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Enriching quality and building capacity: PGR Research Integrity training with volunteer facilitators
By Dr Sam Oakley, Researcher Development and Integrity Specialist We had a positive pivot to online Research Integrity training as a response to the pandemic, facilitated by members of our own research community. This post includes some of their reflections, shared with their permission. In 2020 we swiftly moved our Research Integrity training online, launching […]
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Positive steps to reduce perfectionism
By Suzie Shapiro, PGR Mental Health Adviser Undertaking research work is an exciting and fulfilling opportunity; however, it is also likely to be intense and demanding. Often a solitary role, where self-motivation is critical and the supervisor relationship is highly impactful on your experience, life as a researcher can bring context-specific wellbeing and mental health […]
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Mentoring, much more than advice
By Dr Kay Guccione, Researcher Development Manager As with all types of educational practice, there’s not a ‘right way’ to do mentoring, each mentor chooses their own approach, style and practices, and chooses how and when to apply them in different partnerships, situations and contexts. However, there are certain frameworks into which we fit these […]
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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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The ecology of researcher development
By Dr Kay Guccione (@kayguccione), Researcher Development Team I imagine that if I were to ask you how you came to know what you know about the job you do, or the career you are building, we would talk for hours. Where is development? Every subject matter and professional development course, lecture, workshop, info session, […]
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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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Supporting researchers through ‘emotionally demanding’ research
By Susie Smillie, researcher in the School of Social and Political Sciences and founder of the Emotionally Demanding Research Network in Scotland (@EmotionalResrch), supported by Kay Guccione Researcher Development Team. In this post I use the term ‘emotionally demanding research’ to describe research with participants, data or environments that have the potential to impact upon […]
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Supervisors and Research Integrity: roles and challenges
By Dr Sam Oakley, Researcher Development and Integrity Specialist Both research and policy make it clear that supervisors have a key role to play for Research Integrity, but what does that actually mean in practice? ‘Research Integrity’ is a conceptual policy term that lacks a single definition: whilst acknowledging the different priorities of different disciplines, […]