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With ever developing complexities in the UK’s immigration system, join us for this briefing and Q&A with the University’s Head of Immigration.

The session will cover:

• the ‘basic’ work visas, such as Skilled Worker and Global Talent
• how to switch into or extend these in order to remain in the UK
• guidance on applications for dependents
• Indefinite Leave to Remain/settlement/citizenship applications.

There will also be plenty of time for you to ask questions about other immigration matters. If your question cannot be answered on the day, it will be followed up individually afterwards.

Please note: it is important that when you book this course, on the booking confirmation page, select Add to Calendar to start importing the appointment to your calendar.

This event is for postdocs near the mid-point of their current contract at Cambridge and has been designed specifically for this key career stage to help you position yourself for the next step in your career (in academia or otherwise).

This interactive online session will cover:

• What next - reflecting on your professional development and identifying what you would like to achieve during the rest of your contract.
• Action planning - gain tools to ensure you know when and how to take the next steps during your remaining time as a postdoc.
• How could you get there - sharing ideas for how to achieve your development goals, focus on key professional development topics, and where to find information and support across the University.
• Q&A - informal discussion with the facilitators and other participants.

Please also complete this registration form when you make a booking so that we can tailor the session to suit the needs of participants. Your booking will be approved upon our receipt of this form.

The booking deadline is 12 June.

Please note: when you book this course, on the booking confirmation page, select Add to Calendar to start importing the appointment to your calendar.

Are you unsure how state pensions work in the UK, what the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) is, or how making international moves affects your pension as a postdoc?

Then join us for this information session for postdocs, delivered by the University’s Head of Group Pensions.

The session will cover:

• the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS)
• the State Pension system in the UK
• private pensions in the UK.

There will also be plenty of time for you to ask questions.

Please note: when you book this course, on the booking confirmation page, select Add to Calendar to start importing the appointment to your calendar.

The root cause for 20% of those who suffer from chronic procrastination is perfectionism. Other causes include overwhelm and over complexity of your workload.

This workshop will help you better understand and create mechanisms to manage the experience and impact of procrastination and perfectionism.

During this workshop, you will:

• understand your root causes of procrastination
• try out three different approaches to overcome procrastination
• understand how you can manage the downside of perfectionism.

Please note: when you book this course, on the booking confirmation page, select Add to Calendar to start importing the course to your calendar.

This is one of the formal development opportunities that you can engage with as part of your minimum 10 days (pro rata) of professional development under the Researcher Development Concordat (2019). To learn more about the Concordat, the responsibilities of the University and its research staff therein, please visit our Professional Development Guidance page.

This short, interactive workshop will introduce you to practical tools that will help you test and refine how you are articulating your research vision.

We will not generate ideas for new research projects in the session but, rather, explore what makes a potential research topic compelling. We will also explore how you can assess whether your ideas add up to a vision that is bold, exciting, coherent, and – hopefully – fundable.

This session would benefit researchers at the initial stages of developing a proposal for funding.

We will not review specific funding schemes or application materials in this workshop.

Please note: when you book this course, on the booking confirmation page, select Add to Calendar to start importing the appointment to your calendar.

This is one of the formal development opportunities that you can engage with as part of your minimum 10 days (pro rata) of professional development under the Researcher Development Concordat (2019). To learn more about the Concordat, the responsibilities of the University and its research staff therein, please visit our Professional Development Guidance page.

This masterclass will introduce you to a range of core project management principles which you can apply within your research projects to more effectively plan and monitor your activities.

In this 3-hour online session, you will:

• examine how to define the scope of a research project, including the delivery of outputs, impact and knowledge exchange
• discuss how to engage and manage the expectations of stakeholders to enable smooth project delivery
• explore how your planning and monitoring of research projects is shaped by your methodologies and the expectations of funders
• learn to use key planning, risk management and monitoring tools to effectively manage research projects
• identify your own challenges in managing research projects and discuss ways to overcome them.

Please note: when you book this course, on the booking confirmation page, select Add to Calendar to start importing the appointment to your calendar.

This is one of the formal development opportunities that you can engage with as part of your minimum 10 days (pro rata) of professional development under the Researcher Development Concordat (2019). To learn more about the Concordat, the responsibilities of the University and its research staff therein, please visit our Professional Development Guidance page.

How can you manage a negative thought today? Enhance your focus, reduce stress and strengthen your resilience using techniques proven by science.

In this 1-hour session, you will:

• understand why all humans experience negative thoughts
• learn how to manage a specific negative thought today
• use therapeutic models evidenced by over 100 global studies
• plan a useful next step to help resolve the situation.

74% of adults have felt so stressed at some point over the past year that they felt overwhelmed or unable to cope - Mental Health Foundation.

You must complete the facilitator's Zoom registration form to access your personalised meeting link. See joining instructions for further details.

Please note: when you book this course, on the booking confirmation page, select Add to Calendar to start importing the appointment to your calendar.

This is one of the formal development opportunities that you can engage with as part of your minimum 10 days (pro rata) of professional development under the Researcher Development Concordat (2019). To learn more about the Concordat, the responsibilities of the University and its research staff therein, please visit our Professional Development Guidance page.

This short, interactive session will introduce the fundamental principles of Lean - a methodology which prioritises continuous improvement and respect for people.

Lean is a philosophy and way of working which removes waste from activities and ensures that emphasis is given to tasks that provide added value. Originally developed by Toyota, it is now widely used across many sectors including the NHS and Higher Education.

During this masterclass for postdocs, you will:

• gain a high-level understanding of continuous improvement tools and techniques, and how you can apply them
• develop skills to identify and remove waste in your day-to-day activities to become more effective and efficient.

Please note: when you book this course, on the booking confirmation page, select Add to Calendar to start importing the appointment to your calendar.

This is one of the formal development opportunities that you can engage with as part of your minimum 10 days (pro rata) of professional development under the Researcher Development Concordat (2019). To learn more about the Concordat, the responsibilities of the University and its research staff therein, please visit our Professional Development Guidance page.

These informal sessions give you the opportunity to talk to members of the Postdoc Academy, helping you to figure out how you can begin interacting with us and the wider University community.

There will be the opportunity to ask questions within the small group or speak to us one-to-one.

These sessions provide:

• an introduction to our services, programmes and resources
• guidance on interacting with the wider community, including college affiliations
• signposting to the relevant areas of the University for any advice you may need
• connections to members of the Postdoc Academy team.

Please note: when you book this course, on the booking confirmation page, select Add to Calendar to start importing the appointment to your calendar.

Our core values define what is most important to us, but few of us spend time consciously exploring these.

Understanding whether our goals, aspirations, decisions and actions align with our values can help us to identify what motivates us. This can also help us understand when and why we experience joy or frustration in our day-to-day lives.

In this interactive virtual workshop, you will be given time and space to:

• reflect on your personal values and what is important to you
• consider how you can better satisfy these values in your work and personal life
• support (and receive support from) your peers.

Please note: when you book this course, on the booking confirmation page, select Add to Calendar to start importing the appointment to your calendar.

This is one of the formal development opportunities that you can engage with as part of your minimum 10 days (pro rata) of professional development under the Researcher Development Concordat (2019). To learn more about the Concordat, the responsibilities of the University and its research staff therein, please visit our Professional Development Guidance page.

Do you worry about conflict and disagreement in your team? Do you use strategies to avoid conflict? Do you want to better understand how groups and teams function in order to improve your productivity?

Conflict and disagreement are a natural and inevitable part of group development. What’s important is how this is dealt with.

In this workshop, you will have the opportunity to:

• learn about some key theories on group/team development
• examine strategies to address disagreement in a way which enables you to achieve your team’s goals
• look at some real-world conflict scenarios and apply strategies
• work on a situation from your own context and get feedback.

This workshop is for anyone who works as part of a team and wants to better understand how teams function, or if you are an aspiring team leader looking for strategies to manage teams.

This session runs termly. If you would like to be notified of future iterations of this session, please add yourself to the waitlist or register your interest.

Please note: It is important that when you book this course, on the booking confirmation page, select Add to Calendar to start importing the appointment to your calendar.

This is one of the formal development opportunities that you can engage with as part of your minimum 10 days (pro rata) of professional development under the Researcher Development Concordat (2019). To learn more about the Concordat, the responsibilities of the University and its research staff therein, please visit our Professional Development Guidance page.

How can you make your research proposition stand out in a competitive funding landscape?

In the business and start up world, the Business Model Canvas tool is used to help companies work out how they will create, deliver and capture value. The research canvas is an adaptation of this and helps researchers plan and present their case for applying for research funding.

In this workshop, you will learn to use the Research Canvas. You will also have the opportunity to submit your research canvas after the workshop for personalised feedback.

This workshop will:

• demonstrate the utility of an entrepreneurial tool in a research context
• enable you to implement a tool for planning and presenting your research
• give you opportunities to share your ideas and receive feedback from peers and facilitators.

Please note: when you book this course, on the booking confirmation page, select Add to Calendar to start importing the appointment to your calendar.

This is one of the formal development opportunities that you can engage with as part of your minimum 10 days (pro rata) of professional development under the Researcher Development Concordat (2019). To learn more about the Concordat, the responsibilities of the University and its research staff therein, please visit our Professional Development Guidance page.

Creativity is thought to be associated with the arts, less so with research. Science is perceived as factual, rational and methodical. The scientific process is by nature very methodical - an experiment is designed to test a hypothesis - some would argue that this process doesn't leave much room for creativity.

Yet where does the hypothesis come from in the first place? How do you make sense of data that don’t fit the initial hypothesis? How can you assemble the pieces of a scientific puzzle to write a coherent research article?

Researchers do need a great deal of mental agility, a capacity to navigate complex ideas, and the ability to view things from multiple perspectives in order to succeed. In other words, a researcher’s creativity is an integral part of their work.

This workshop will start with a discussion on the nature of creativity and the role of intuition in research. Participants will then engage in a series of playful and creative activities to better assess their abilities, gain confidence and understand what promotes and hinders their own creativity.

At the end of the training, you will be able to:

• silence your inner critic
• give space to your own creativity
• enjoy the playfulness of creativity
• co-create and be a better team player.

Please note: when you book this course, on the booking confirmation page, select Add to Calendar to start importing the appointment to your calendar.

This is one of the formal development opportunities that you can engage with as part of your minimum 10 days (pro rata) of professional development under the Researcher Development Concordat (2019). To learn more about the Concordat, the responsibilities of the University and its research staff therein, please visit our Professional Development Guidance page.

The Postdoc Academy provides welcome events specific to postdocs joining the University of Cambridge - these are open to postdocs affiliated with the University, Colleges and University Partner Institutes.

These sessions include presentations from the Postdoc Academy, PdOC and Careers Service, followed by a Q&A and then networking.

You will be given information on how to navigate life as a researcher in Cambridge and then have the opportunity to network with other new postdocs and University services.

During the session, postdocs will learn about:

• interacting with the Postdoc Academy
• attending professional development activities and accessing the Careers Service
• connecting to the wider postdoc community at Cambridge
• accessing resources available to postdocs as staff members.

Please note: when you book this course, on the booking confirmation page, select Add to Calendar to start importing the appointment to your calendar.

If you have any questions or problems with signing-up, please email events.pda@admin.cam.ac.uk.

Do you have a deadline coming up or a piece of writing that’s long overdue? Or maybe some data analysis that keeps slipping to the bottom of your to-do list?

Our online retreats give you time, peace, and space to think and write. Each session will provide a friendly and constructive environment in which to meet like-minded peers, discuss challenges, and work in a focused way using the Pomodoro technique.

These virtual retreats are being hosted collaboratively across several institutions to encourage researchers across career stages and institutions to come together in a sustainable writing environment.

The retreats will take place several times per month throughout the academic year and you can attend as many as you like (within booking limits for each session).

Please note: It is important that when you book this course, on the booking confirmation page, click on Add to Calendar to start the process of importing the course appointment to your calendar.