Researcher Development Programme (RDP) course timetable
Monday 3 March
| 14:00 |
Getting published is a central part of being a researcher. Peer-reviewed publications allow researchers to communicate their research to the broader research community, and thus, contribute to the body of work within their field. This workshop is part 2 of 3, and concerns the process of peer-review manuscript preparation and the submital process, including peer-review. |
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In this series of four sessions we’ll be taking an in-depth look at various aspects of writing at postgraduate level. Each session will be 90mins, with 30mins at the end for questions and discussion. Whilst they have been designed as a set of sessions, with each building on from the previous, the individual sessions have been designed to be standalone – which means that you can attend the whole series or just those that particularly speak to you.
In this first session, we’ll be taking a step back and reflecting for a moment on what it is that you’re actually doing at PG level, as this is far more than simply writing. You’re engaging in a complex, cognitive process of knowledge creation. And so when the writing gets hard, its useful just to remember that what you are doing is far more complicated than just writing – as writing is something that you can all already do and to a pretty high degree of ability. In fact, as we will see, there are numerous factors involved in writing at this level, from the epistemological assumptions of your discipline, through how we construct argument, before we even get to how we construct an articulate sentence – and we’ll be looking at all of these.
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| 16:00 |
Public Engagement: Drop-in Sessions
Finished
A series of 30-minute drop-in sessions to talk with a member of the Public Engagement team. We offer expert advice to support your public engagement work, engagement processes and activities. These include:
These sessions are not workshops or taught sessions. Based on your area of expertise and depending on your School affiliation, you can book a time with one of our public engagement professionals:
The team will be available every week, each mentor offering two sessions of 30 minutes in the day and time indicated above. We will release new slots in the same days and times a couple of months in advance. Please book for the day and time you would like to attend, and you will receive closer to the session the Teams link to meet with the mentor. The link will be sent by RDP Course Administrator. Please make sure that that e-mail address does not go to your spam folder. |
| 16:30 |
Public Engagement: Drop-in Sessions
Finished
A series of 30-minute drop-in sessions to talk with a member of the Public Engagement team. We offer expert advice to support your public engagement work, engagement processes and activities. These include:
These sessions are not workshops or taught sessions. Based on your area of expertise and depending on your School affiliation, you can book a time with one of our public engagement professionals:
The team will be available every week, each mentor offering two sessions of 30 minutes in the day and time indicated above. We will release new slots in the same days and times a couple of months in advance. Please book for the day and time you would like to attend, and you will receive closer to the session the Teams link to meet with the mentor. The link will be sent by RDP Course Administrator. Please make sure that that e-mail address does not go to your spam folder. |
Tuesday 4 March
| 14:00 |
Writing at postgraduate level: The Universitys criterion 'clearly written' - what this means
Finished
In this series of four sessions we’ll be taking an in-depth look at various aspects of writing at postgraduate level. Each session will be 90mins, with 30mins at the end for questions and discussion. Whilst they have been designed as a set of sessions, with each building on from the previous, the individual sessions have been designed to be standalone – which means that you can attend the whole series or just those that particularly speak to you.
If you’ve ever had a look at the Cambridge Student webpages as to the requirements of postgraduate writing submitted for assessment, you’ll see that the University has only one criterion – and this is that it is ‘clearly written.’ At first glance, this seems both explicit and unequivocal as clarity in all its forms is surely the bedrock not only of postgraduate study, but of academia itself. Yet on further scrutiny, whilst there may be an instinctive consensus that this is a cardinal criterion for postgraduate writing, when it comes to defining what this actually means and how we are supposed to attain it, the matter is far less perspicuous. And indeed, clearly written is not simply an assessment criterion at Cambridge, as the vast majority of guides to academic writing rhapsodise about clarity as an assumed mutually acknowledged objective. Yet rarely is this criterion unpacked. And so in this second session, we’ll be looking at doing just that – by considering what academics see as the central tenet of ‘clearly written’, namely, argument, and also in what ways the rhetorical expectations of ‘clearly written’ in English may differ from the expectations in other languages.
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Wednesday 5 March
| 12:00 |
Public Engagement: Drop-in Sessions
Finished
A series of 30-minute drop-in sessions to talk with a member of the Public Engagement team. We offer expert advice to support your public engagement work, engagement processes and activities. These include:
These sessions are not workshops or taught sessions. Based on your area of expertise and depending on your School affiliation, you can book a time with one of our public engagement professionals:
The team will be available every week, each mentor offering two sessions of 30 minutes in the day and time indicated above. We will release new slots in the same days and times a couple of months in advance. Please book for the day and time you would like to attend, and you will receive closer to the session the Teams link to meet with the mentor. The link will be sent by RDP Course Administrator. Please make sure that that e-mail address does not go to your spam folder. |
| 12:30 |
Public Engagement: Drop-in Sessions
Finished
A series of 30-minute drop-in sessions to talk with a member of the Public Engagement team. We offer expert advice to support your public engagement work, engagement processes and activities. These include:
These sessions are not workshops or taught sessions. Based on your area of expertise and depending on your School affiliation, you can book a time with one of our public engagement professionals:
The team will be available every week, each mentor offering two sessions of 30 minutes in the day and time indicated above. We will release new slots in the same days and times a couple of months in advance. Please book for the day and time you would like to attend, and you will receive closer to the session the Teams link to meet with the mentor. The link will be sent by RDP Course Administrator. Please make sure that that e-mail address does not go to your spam folder. |
Thursday 6 March
| 12:00 |
Lunch Series: Resilience in your PhD
Finished
Let’s face it; being a researcher can be stressful! Not only are you managing the ups and downs of your PhD, but you are probably balancing work and life and also have one eye on the future and what comes after you finish… This workshop is designed to help you build your resilience. You probably already have some strategies in place so we will reflect on the highs and lows you have already experienced, learn about 3 Cs of resilience (Commitment, Challenge, Control) and consider how we can better support your coping and wellbeing. |
| 14:00 |
Public Engagement: Drop-in Sessions
Finished
A series of 30-minute drop-in sessions to talk with a member of the Public Engagement team. We offer expert advice to support your public engagement work, engagement processes and activities. These include:
These sessions are not workshops or taught sessions. Based on your area of expertise and depending on your School affiliation, you can book a time with one of our public engagement professionals:
The team will be available every week, each mentor offering two sessions of 30 minutes in the day and time indicated above. We will release new slots in the same days and times a couple of months in advance. Please book for the day and time you would like to attend, and you will receive closer to the session the Teams link to meet with the mentor. The link will be sent by RDP Course Administrator. Please make sure that that e-mail does not go to your spam folder. |
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In this series of four sessions we’ll be taking an in-depth look at various aspects of writing at postgraduate level. Each session will be 90mins, with 30mins at the end for questions and discussion. Whilst they have been designed as a set of sessions, with each building on from the previous, the individual sessions have been designed to be standalone – which means that you can attend the whole series or just those that particularly speak to you.
The primary focus of most writing training is on honing your skills as a writer – and for obvious reasons. But what tends to be overlooked is the reason why we are writing – namely, to be read. Text is generated to be read by a reader and as soon as it has been submitted, it belongs to the reader, a reader who has no recourse to question the writer. This is why the monological form of writing is difficult, as the writer has to structure the text and articulate the content in such a way that they will hopefully be received by the reader as the writer intended it, and so it has to be clearly articulated. And this is precisely an aspect that novice postgraduate writers often struggle with – the research has been conducted and it is now simply a case of getting it down on the page. As one academic I have spoken to about this put it, they tend to write with no empathy for the reader, thereby forcing the reader to do the hard work of trying to elicit from what they have said what it is that they are actually trying to say. Being widely read has long been known as good training for a writer – but explicitly thinking of the reader when constructing text is often overlooked, when in fact it proffers a useful frame through which to view one’s own writing. So, in this third session we’ll be looking at the concept of reader empathy and why it’s important to think of your reader when writing. We’ll look at a range of strategies to help you to do this: from the macro perspective of the structure of the entire document, through rhetorical templates, right down to where the reader expects information to be in a sentence.
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| 14:30 |
Public Engagement: Drop-in Sessions
Finished
A series of 30-minute drop-in sessions to talk with a member of the Public Engagement team. We offer expert advice to support your public engagement work, engagement processes and activities. These include:
These sessions are not workshops or taught sessions. Based on your area of expertise and depending on your School affiliation, you can book a time with one of our public engagement professionals:
The team will be available every week, each mentor offering two sessions of 30 minutes in the day and time indicated above. We will release new slots in the same days and times a couple of months in advance. Please book for the day and time you would like to attend, and you will receive closer to the session the Teams link to meet with the mentor. The link will be sent by RDP Course Administrator. Please make sure that that e-mail does not go to your spam folder. |
Friday 7 March
| 10:00 |
Ever wonder why you seem to ‘click’ with one person and not another? Ever wonder why you might find some things easier to do than others? The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) might shed some light on these questions. Why this course might make a difference. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator presents a framework to help you understand yourself and others, by exploring differences and preferences in four areas of your personality. As a result of this exploration, you may work more effectively and be more understanding in your relationships with others. Led by a qualified MBTI practitioner, the workshop comprises working through the MBTI questionnaire and self-assessment exercises, so that participants can:
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This event is Online only. Why is YouTube popular? Because people love watching videos. A research video can be a great way to get your message across to your collaborators, your friends, and the wider world as well as being a condition of some funding bodies. But it isn't easy to do well - and this is where this course will make a difference. Come along and learn the skills needed to plan, shoot & edit high quality footage for research videos so that your video can stand out from the crowd. You just need yourself, a camera phone and your enthusiasm! You will have the opportunity for a one-to-one 30-minute session with the trainer where you can discuss your ideas and questions and get project specific help. The course will be led by Ryd Cook. Ryd is a multi award winning film director, actor and mentor. His fiction and documentary films have screened in film festivals around the world. He has 15+ years of experience, filming, editing and producing a range of films. He has also been teaching practical filmmaking for over 10 years for all ages. He currently works as a director, cameraperson, actor and mentor. |
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| 14:00 |
In this series of four sessions we’ll be taking an in-depth look at various aspects of writing at postgraduate level. Each session will be 90mins, with 30mins at the end for questions and discussion. Whilst they have been designed as a set of sessions, with each building on from the previous, the individual sessions have been designed to be standalone – which means that you can attend the whole series or just those that particularly speak to you.
Having got everything down on paper in a first draft is a huge achievement, but this is where the work really starts in the editing – refining the structure, the content, and the language to strengthen your argument and the clarity of your articulation. Academics I’ve spoken to say that on average they go through between 10-20 rounds of edits in their own writing, with the lower end being more in the sciences disciplines and the higher figure more in the arts and humanities disciplines. In this final session, we’ll be looking at editing from a macro, through the mezzo, and down to the micro level, from the bigger picture of how the entire document hangs together, through how to keep the argument on track at the mezzo level, and then right down to individual paragraphs and sentence, where we’ll be looking at such features as hedging, emphasis, passive voice, and nominalisations.
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| 15:00 |
This event is Online only. Why is YouTube popular? Because people love watching videos. A research video can be a great way to get your message across to your collaborators, your friends, and the wider world as well as being a condition of some funding bodies. But it isn't easy to do well - and this is where this course will make a difference. Come along and learn the skills needed to plan, shoot & edit high quality footage for research videos so that your video can stand out from the crowd. You just need yourself, a camera phone and your enthusiasm! You will have the opportunity for a one-to-one 30-minute session with the trainer where you can discuss your ideas and questions and get project specific help. The course will be led by Ryd Cook. Ryd is a multi award winning film director, actor and mentor. His fiction and documentary films have screened in film festivals around the world. He has 15+ years of experience, filming, editing and producing a range of films. He has also been teaching practical filmmaking for over 10 years for all ages. He currently works as a director, cameraperson, actor and mentor. |
Monday 10 March
| 10:00 |
This course seeks to help students develop their critical reading skills, and to deploy tactics and strategies that can accelerate the process of literature-based research without sacrificing detail and depth necessary for a doctoral thesis. |
| 16:00 |
Public Engagement: Drop-in Sessions
Finished
A series of 30-minute drop-in sessions to talk with a member of the Public Engagement team. We offer expert advice to support your public engagement work, engagement processes and activities. These include:
These sessions are not workshops or taught sessions. Based on your area of expertise and depending on your School affiliation, you can book a time with one of our public engagement professionals:
The team will be available every week, each mentor offering two sessions of 30 minutes in the day and time indicated above. We will release new slots in the same days and times a couple of months in advance. Please book for the day and time you would like to attend, and you will receive closer to the session the Teams link to meet with the mentor. The link will be sent by RDP Course Administrator. Please make sure that that e-mail address does not go to your spam folder. |
| 16:30 |
Public Engagement: Drop-in Sessions
Finished
A series of 30-minute drop-in sessions to talk with a member of the Public Engagement team. We offer expert advice to support your public engagement work, engagement processes and activities. These include:
These sessions are not workshops or taught sessions. Based on your area of expertise and depending on your School affiliation, you can book a time with one of our public engagement professionals:
The team will be available every week, each mentor offering two sessions of 30 minutes in the day and time indicated above. We will release new slots in the same days and times a couple of months in advance. Please book for the day and time you would like to attend, and you will receive closer to the session the Teams link to meet with the mentor. The link will be sent by RDP Course Administrator. Please make sure that that e-mail address does not go to your spam folder. |
Tuesday 11 March
| 10:00 |
Intercultural Communication
POSTPONED
Research in the 21st century is a global endeavour, with research teams often being made up of individuals from different cultures. At our university we have students from 140 different countries, with around 25% of undergraduate students and over 50% of postgraduate students coming from outside the UK. This diversity is one of our greatest strengths, however, intercultural communication can sometimes lead to misunderstandings. It's important to be aware of our own cultural assumptions and to try to understand those of others. This workshop aims to provide you with tools to help recognise when national culture might be influencing your professional and social interactions, where conflicts may arise, and how to address these challenges. The session's content is based on research from intercultural studies and views culture as a framework of shared values, attitudes, and behaviours. It explores the nature of generalisations and the connection between national culture, other forms of diversity (such as gender, professional background, and generational differences), and, most importantly, personal preferences.
Tea, coffee, water, & biscuits will be provided.
This training is provided free of charge to postgraduate researchers, however, the cost of providing the course is £30 per participant. |
| 14:00 |
Getting published is a central part of being a researcher. Understanding where and why to publisht is crucial to developing an effective stragegy that will help you realise your research and/or career ambitions. With this in mind, the workshop explores strategy around the question of ‘high impact’, and the various meanings (formal and informal) this implies, the limitations of impact metrics and the importance of understanding publishing cultures across academia, and how these vary. |
Wednesday 12 March
| 09:30 |
The last hurdle, your viva examination, but what will it be like? What will the examiners ask? How can you prepare for it? This workshop provides participants with an insight into the process, and helps them understand what to expect within a doctoral degree viva, including a discussion on the type and nature of questions most-likely to be posed by examiners. This course is not suitable for students in their first year, and we strongly advise against students in their second year from attending. |
| 12:00 |
Public Engagement: Drop-in Sessions
Finished
A series of 30-minute drop-in sessions to talk with a member of the Public Engagement team. We offer expert advice to support your public engagement work, engagement processes and activities. These include:
These sessions are not workshops or taught sessions. Based on your area of expertise and depending on your School affiliation, you can book a time with one of our public engagement professionals: Dr Lucinda Spokes, Head of Public Engagement, all areas and schools - Monday, 16:00-16:30 and 16:30-17:00 Dr Diogo Martins-Gomes, Public Engagement and Communications Manager, Clinical School and School of Biological Sciences - Wednesday, 12:00-12:30 and 12:30-13:00 Dr Claudia Antolini, Public Engagement Manager, School of Physical Sciences and School of Technology - Thursday 14:00-14:30 and 14:30-15:00 The team will be available every week, each mentor offering two sessions of 30 minutes in the day and time indicated above. We will release new slots in the same days and times a couple of months in advance. Please book for the day and time you would like to attend, and you will receive closer to the session the Teams link to meet with the mentor. The link will be sent by RDP Course Administrator. Please make sure that that e-mail address does not go to your spam folder. |
| 12:30 |
Public Engagement: Drop-in Sessions
Finished
A series of 30-minute drop-in sessions to talk with a member of the Public Engagement team. We offer expert advice to support your public engagement work, engagement processes and activities. These include:
These sessions are not workshops or taught sessions. Based on your area of expertise and depending on your School affiliation, you can book a time with one of our public engagement professionals:
The team will be available every week, each mentor offering two sessions of 30 minutes in the day and time indicated above. We will release new slots in the same days and times a couple of months in advance. Please book for the day and time you would like to attend, and you will receive closer to the session the Teams link to meet with the mentor. The link will be sent by RDP Course Administrator. Please make sure that that e-mail address does not go to your spam folder. |
| 12:45 |
A PhD is a long project and a huge personal investment. It’s normal to find yourself feeling a bit ‘fatigued’ with your project, or to find it hard to maintain enthusiasm. This short session aims to bring this into focus and discuss ways of maintaining your pace throughout the PhD. Come along and meet other PhD students, and help each other to remember what you love about your PhD research! If you find this course helpful, you may also be interested in our ‘Resilience in your PhD’ sessions. |
| 14:00 |
This beginner’s course is designed to get you thinking about preparing your first presentation. Giving presentations is an essential skill for a researcher, be it in your department, at a major conference, or in your next job interview! During the workshop we will discuss how your story, your slides and you as a presenter contribute to the impactful presentation. |
