As today is officially the last day of my secondment to the UWE Researcher Development Manager role, I just wanted to say goodbye and to thank everyone – not least Paul – for all your help, support (and patience!) over the last six months, and for making this such an amazing experience. Thankyou so much for…
Read more Goodbye from Helen – and welcome back Paul!
Recently we held our twice-yearly UWE research staff development event, this time on the theme of “getting to grips with your research career.” As the title suggests the event was a space for researchers from across UWE to get together and reflect on where they’re at in their career, where they might want to go, and how…
Read more Getting to grips with your research career
Last week was Summer Sessions 2014 – a four-day long festival of all the fantastic work being done by UWE PGRs, their supervisors and all the other folks who support them in various ways. Monday saw the UWE round of the national 3 minute thesis competition, and we wish Davina the very best of luck…
Read more Summer Sessions 2014
…that I’d like to share with you, because it illustrates the importance of having your ‘research story’ prepared and ready to go at the drop of a hat. Out of the blue, I was contacted yesterday afternoon by a researcher working on a BBC Radio 4 documentary about something to do with funerals. Apparantly they…
Read more Something happened to me yesterday…
Do you PDP…? There was a time – not all that long ago – when an academic research career was often something that kind of happened: you did okay at your Bachelors degree, a bit better at your Masters, then by this time you were ‘into’ a particular topic so the PhD (or DPhil…
Read more Personal Development Planning for researchers
PM in a nutshell Recently we ran our regular half-day workshop for researchers on “Project Management in a Nutshell”. The purpose of this workshop is to de-mystify some of the jargon which surrounds project management, and to consider some practical ideas for managing your project, be it a PhD or other research project. The discussion…
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We’ve recently welcomed our latest group of new postgraduate researchers: this happens three times a year (October, January and April) and the aim of the Welcome Event is to provide a space for our new postgraduate researchers from all over the university to get together and to find out who’s who and what’s what with regard…
Read more Welcome!
What do you want to be when you grow up? How many of us honestly started out in life intending to do a doctorate? Like many of us, I have to admit that I kind of ended up doing mine because a) somebody said I could have a place to do it; b) it seemed like a good way of avoiding the corporate career path without…
Read more Future Directions
Yesterday we ran our “The effective researcher – the middle years” workshop. This is aimed at PGRs who, having expended considerable time and energy passing Progression, are now experiencing the dreaded “second year slump” – when progress seems elusive, perspective fails, and you lie awake at 3am wondering why the h*ll are you doing this,…
Read more The Effective Researcher: the middle years
Hello everyone, My name is Dr Helen Frisby, and I’m absolutely delighted to have been appointed to look after Paul’s Researcher Development Manager role for the next few months whilst he covers our Graduate School Manager’s job. Readers from the UWE Faculty of Business & Law might well recognise my name, because for the last four and a bit years I’ve been supporting their…
Read more Hello from Dr Helen Frisby