Office of Postdoctoral Affairs course timetable

People love stories. They entertain, they help us to remember. This short interactive session is aimed at researchers looking to improve the effectiveness of their communication. It will introduce the importance of working out who your audience is and what they want to know. It will also explore how storytelling is as relevant to research communication as it is to fairy tales. We all have to communicate our research and ideas, why not do it through stories?

The session will be delivered by the Academic Director for STEM, Institute of Continuing Education.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

Have you ever wondered who can access your research? Most articles and research outputs are locked up behind paywalls inside an ivory tower. Find out how to make your research more open to reach a broader audience, spark collaborations and, most importantly, improve the quality of your research.

Getting things right is critical when working with human participants and/or personal data. Non-ethical research may put the participants at risk or damage the validity of your findings. Moreover, appropriate ethical reflection is a feature of high quality research and goes beyond an approval letter from a research ethics committee. Taking an ethics-by-numbers approach to ethical approval, without due reflection of the specifics concerns involved may lead you to unnecessarily restrict your research. It may also mean you’re less prepared to handle ongoing or unexpected ethical considerations e.g. decision-making in fieldwork or how best to interpret and disseminate data.

On this course, you will learn the principles underpinning ethical research and how to manage issues like seeking informed consent, recruiting vulnerable people, processing personal data, balancing participants’ interests with academic freedom and societal obligations, re-using personal data, respecting participant autonomy and reacting to unexpected events. Using case studies and group discussion, this course will explore best practice for working with human participants and personal data and provide opportunities for you to share your experiences and learn from others.

If you have recently started peer reviewing, or are ready to get involved, the OSC invites you to this unmissable session, where you will pick up tips and best practices from PLOS, publishers of the world's largest multi-disciplinary peer-reviewed journal.