Call for programme content

Background

The Vitae researcher development conference is the UK’s largest event for people working to advance the personal, professional and career development of researchers.

The annual Vitae researcher development conference in 2010 will bring together over 400 professionals for a two-day programme of policy and strategic development, learning and practice sharing.  In response to positive feedback in 2009, we are again inviting participants to propose workshop sessions and fringe sessions.

The Vitae researcher development conference 2010 will address strategic and practical implications of the following themes:

• sustaining and building capacity in UK HEIs for researchers’ professional development to maintain research excellence and the UK’s international reputation
• demonstrating the value of researcher development on research outputs, researcher careers, economic prosperity and society
• sector progress in implementing the principles of the Concordat
• policy developments relating to postgraduate researchers including the outcomes from the ‘One Step Beyond: making the most of postgraduate education’
• sustainable practice to support researcher skills, professional and career development, including online and collaborative provision

Choosing what to propose

The following information is designed to help you choose how you can best contribute to the information and practice sharing activities at the 2010 conference.  If you would like to discuss the best format or suitable collaborators for your proposal please contact Peri Cihan at peri.cihan@vitae.ac.uk or on  01223 448537    .

Workshops

Workshops will be well planned, structured sessions lasting either 55 or 80 minutes.  They will have clear learning outcomes for participants and address an area of policy or practice in researcher development.  How each workshop develops one or more of the conference themes will be easily identifiable.  55 minute workshops will run on Monday 6 September, and 80 minute workshops on Tuesday 7 September.

The deadline for proposing a workshop was Friday 25 June 2010.

Special interest sessions

Special interest sessions will last 30 minutes and offer an opportunity to explore an area that does not clearly fit into a workshop because:

• the topic does not clearly link to the stated conference themes but is of interest to some participants
• the session structure is very flexible and/or has no predefined outcomes
• the topic is a fledgling/undeveloped idea
• the topic comes to the fore close to the conference date and so is too late to schedule and plan a workshop about

Propose a special interest session

Although special interest proposals will be considered at any point, only those submitted by Friday 25 June will be considered for inclusion in widely circulated conference information.

Suggest content

We are keen to hear from you about what you want to see in the conference programme.  Whether you have an idea for a topic you would like addressed, areas of practice you would like to learn about or specific people you would like to hear from please post up your ideas.   

Suggest content