Category: PI Practices
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Boundaries in PGR Supervision
By Steve Hutchinson, Director of Hutchinson Training & Development specialising in Leadership, Communication and Personal Effectiveness; and co-author of ‘Coaching and Mentoring for Academic Development’. If you meet postgraduates you’ll hear horror stories about supervisors. For example recently I encountered a furious PGR with “a terrible supervisor” who, it transpired, “only sees me once per week!” (!)…
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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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Eight Things Your (New) PGRs Need You to Talk About
By Dr Joanna Royle, Researcher Development Manager Co-ordinating PGR Induction Week is perhaps the most invigorating part of my job. There’s something about that mix of excitement and discombobulation as so many PGRs get to grips with the next stage of their professional lives. What should they be doing? When should they be doing it?…
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Supporting Your PGR Supervisees’ Wellbeing
By Suzie Shapiro, PGR Mental Health Adviser Undertaking postgraduate research can be an exciting time; however, it also presents very tangible challenges. It can be a time of culture shock, overwhelm and isolation that can impede a researcher’s wellbeing and their performance. So, when we talk about ‘wellbeing’ what do we really mean? Let’s consider…
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Reframing networking as a valuable development opportunity
Dr Rhoda Stefanatos, Researcher Development Specialist for Research Staff I remember it well, as I am sure we all do. That awkwardness and unease when you find yourself at the post event or conference social where you are supposed to be ‘networking’. This discomfort could be coming from several places. Maybe you don’t know anyone…
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Get the ‘Right’ Doctoral Researchers – Good Practice in Recruitment
By Steve Hutchinson, Director of Hutchinson Training & Development specialising in Leadership, Communication and Personal Effectiveness; and co-author of ‘Coaching and Mentoring for Academic Development’. Let’s start with a thought exercise. If you could design a perfect doctoral researcher who was perfectly suited to the intellectual, organisational and psychological challenges, what ingredients would you include…
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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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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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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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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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Supervising disabled and chronically ill PGRs
Dr Jennifer Leigh is a Senior Lecturer in Higher Education and Academic Practice at the University of Kent. She has written on various aspects of marginalisation in academia and STEM, and creative, reflective, and embodied research methods. She is co-editor of the 2020 book Ableism in Academia, which you can download for free here. Dr…
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Neurodiversity in research: Rethinking rules and expectations
Elliott Spaeth is a Lecturer in Academic and Digital Development at the University of Glasgow. He is trans, disabled, and neurodivergent. What is neurodiversity and why do I need to know about it? In 2015, an image of a dress went viral because people saw its colours differently – some saw blue and black, others…
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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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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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