I’m a former researcher into the microbiology of the mouth who now runs a skills development programme for other researchers.
At the end of September we ran another Researchers’ Forum at UWE, the theme of which was “getting your research noticed”. What we were trying to do was to provide researchers with the opportunity and space to consider how they could go about building up a reputation as a researcher. We spent the morning in…
I recently attended the Vitae Researcher Development International Conference in Manchester. This is a gathering of folks who are involved in the skills development of postgraduate research students and research staff where updates on policy and strategic initiatives are discussed. It also serves as a way for all of us skills development types to share…
“Why?” is a question I’m faced with a lot recently, partly because I have small children who tend to utter this word an awful lot, but mostly because explaining the “why” of research has never been more important. I’ve been meaning to write this post for some time now spurred on by recent events like…
Last week I attended a course commissioned by the South West & Wales Vitae hub entitled “Focus on…Resilience”. This was a course aimed at people who support the development of researchers with an enticing topic that seems to be high on everyone’s priority list, even if the attribute of “resilience” might at first appear a…
On Monday (11th July) myself and Dr Sharron Whitecross from Research, Business & Innovation contributed to one of the UWE Research Centre away days by facilitating a discussion about the challenges of working in an area of research that involves many disciplines. The researchers were concerned that the different perspectives from disciplines might get in the…
A few weeks ago I spied an announcement from the makers of the “Piled Higher and Deeper” comic strip that they had gone and made a film. Now this has me quite excited because, although the protagonists of this comic strip are set in the U.S., the shenanigans portrayed translate very well to the UK experience…
Read more PhD – The Movie. Coming soon to a university near you?
On Friday 1st July, UWE held it’s first summer connections event for doctoral students from across all faculties and this is an attempt to capture some of the things that came out of the day to preserve it for posterity. We wanted to offer an opportunity for doctoral students to be able to get together…
Connections is the theme for the UWE summer conference for postgraduate research students on Friday 1st July. This event has been in the making for a little while now, most of the faculties and/or departments at UWE have recognised and provide the opportunity for their research students to present aspects of their research at…
On Tuesday 14th June, we ran a course at UWE entitled “Becoming a digital researcher” (#druwe) which was facilitated by Dr Tristram Hooley from the University of Derby with a little help from me. Throughout the day we covered:- Personal Learning Environment – How and where do we get our information from Social Media Tools…
In a social media session today at UWE (#druwe for twitter users). Just been issued the challenge to post something to my blog, trying to do this quickly on my iPhone using the posterous app. Not bad eh?
The Digital Doctorate 