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A full day conference for research staff from the 5 North East Universities with a programme aimed to help researchers reflect upon their own professional development and focus on the actions they can take to develop and manage their careers

This 'PI Development Programme' offers a range of transferable skills training, designed to assist the professional development of postdoctoral researchers, who are new to, or aspire to, the role of research leader.

This course supports researchers whilst they write publications. Giving them practical help with structuring and writing papers and also support to find the time and motivation produce a complete first draft.

This is a 2 day course for research staff focusing first on project management and then, on day two , managing people with a particular emphasising managing relationships within a research team in order to get the best out of people and your project.

PFA is an accredited programme (20 'M' level credits - approx 1/3 of a UK PGCertHE) for early career researchers who want a formal qualification that will help them secure an academic teaching position. It is accredited by the Higher Education Academy such that participants who successfully complete the programme are entitled to apply for status as an Associate Fellow of the HE Academy.

An Academic in the World was a series of four half-day workshops ran as 2 day events on 22nd March and 23rd April 2010. The idea for the series of workshops arose out of outcomes of a previous White Rose residential event, “Making your Impact in Academia” aimed at research staff in Arts in Social Science.

Developing research funding applications is a multi-stage process including; refining the question and methods, finding collaborators, identifying appropriate funding sources, knowing what makes a successful application and who to get advice from, costing the bid and writing the application form. This project seeks to address some of these stages. The specific objectives are: 1. To create a series of short video clips/ audio recordings featuring staff from Department of Health Sciences, covering: • Features of successful applications. These will spotlight on senior staff who are panel members for some of the major health research funding bodies. • Staff experiences of applying for external funding. These will contain reflections of staff who have applied for research funding, both successful and unsuccessful. These resources will be stored on the Health Sciences Staff Intranet (on a web page dedicated to the project) with links from both research and teaching related pages. An online survey will give people who access the resource an opportunity to feedback their views on its usefulness. 2. To establish a Learning Set of early to mid career research staff to facilitate the development of skills in writing research funding applications. Early to mid career researchers will present research ideas to the learning set for discussion or commenting on applications in progress. The group would meet once a month and maintain an email list of members that could be contacted for advice when needed. The project team will be supported by two senior members of staff (Karen Bloor and Karen Spilsbury) and has been approved by Head of Department (Professor Christine Godfrey) and Chair of Departmental Research Committee (Professor Nicky Cullum).

The York Award: Researchers is a certificate of the University of York which recognises and rewards those PhD students who undertake an active programme of personal development over the course of their registration. It operates alongside degree programmes and aims to capture the impact of all aspects of university life in terms of the skills and experiences that they will find beneficial in their future life and work. The process of applying for the York Award: Researchers will allow postgraduate researchers to evaluate their unique set of skills and experiences, and ensure that they are able to communicate the value of their research degree and transferrable skills to an academic and a lay audience.

Building Impact into Social Science Research was funded by vitae innovate fund applied for and successfully awarded to Professor Richard Thorpe and Dr Paul Ellwood. The event was supported by the Staff and Departmental Development Unit at Leeds. Much of the following text formed part of a proposal to Vitae written by Paul Ellwood and Richard Thorpe, with summary and context written by Jenn Chubb at the University of York. This Vitae Innovate funded project enabled the development of a module to be integrated into postgraduate training programmes – it contained both concepts and practical tools aimed at helping students understand and connect with aspects related to the impact of social science research. The Innovate fund supported a two day Leeds University Business School course entitled Building Impact into Social Science Research followed by a two day Social Science- wide White Rose residential event at Bodington Hall with input from academics reporting on the impact of their research and interactive group work activities. Building Impact into Social Science Research aimed to provide an introduction to this increasingly important aspect of a researcher’s life. Through a mixture of presentations, specialist speakers and practical exercises, the workshop provided a grounding in the emerging UK policy environment, appropriate research design and practical engagement mechanisms with research stakeholders.

This course gives researchers the hands-on opportunity to learn about the process involved in publishing and reviewing journal articles over a 3 month period.