Training and development

Our Programme offers a comprehensive package of sessions, events and activities which present exceptional opportunities for you to develop your research and professional skills.

Each event brings the opportunity to meet researchers from outside your School and to gain from their experiences, skills and approaches to research.

Our learning programme includes generic personal and professional skills alongside research techniques appropriate to your discipline. You can plan your training by how it applies to each stage of your research journey and research plan.

Research journey

Our booking system uses the TACE (Transition, Acquisition, Completion and Employability) framework to give you a rough indication as to what learning opportunities to consider and when, although this will vary across disciplines and methods:

Transition: induction and orientation, stepping into research, learning research essentials, joining the postgraduate research community.
Acquisition: developing academic competence, research capabilities, personal effectiveness and transferable skills; building communities and networks.
Completion: sustaining momentum and focus, developing personal resilience, completing the thesis, developing research impact.
Employability: planning for the future, exploring opportunity for career fulfilment, extending networks.

Research plan

In the first formal supervision meeting, you will complete a Training Needs Analysis as part of your Research Plan. This will be reviewed and discussed as part of the Research Student Progress Monitoring Procedure.

Just as you plan the research project itself, you will form a plan for your personal and professional development.

The Researcher Development Framework

Our Programme is also mapped to the four domains of the Researcher Development Framework (RDF), which you may be asked to reflect in your training plan:

knowledge and intellectual abilities
personal effectiveness
research, governance and organisation
engagement, influence and impact.

The RDF, endorsed by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and other higher education bodies and institutions, outlines the knowledge, skills, behaviours and personal qualities of effective research professionals.

Find further information about the RDF on the Vitae website.

In addition to courses we also enable researcher development through a number of other opportunities such as interdisciplinary activities, student conferences and competitions.