Researchers' experiences of academic networking

Networking can raise barriers for some disabled postgraduate researchers. Some of those barriers are practical:

‘Postgraduates are expected to attend academic conferences. I am in my third year and have only just attended my first. This is directly because I was aware of the extensive planning it would take. I wish people knew that going to a week-long conference takes three months of planning. While my fellow postgraduates write a paper and jump on a train or aeroplane, I have to arrange funding for and find a non-medical helper willing to come; find and book accessible, often expensive, accommodation; find and arrange an accessible way to get there and ensure that the conference itself will be accessible. Underlying all that is an increasing and rising feeling of dread. At any point something could step in my way and the effort of the previous weeks could pour themselves down the drain.’

Postgraduate researcher with a mobility impairment

Building confidence

The research experience is incomplete without the development of the skills and confidence  necessary to network and to present research effectively.  Supervisors may find it  hard to recognise and empathise with a postgraduate researcher's fear of presenting their work, but this  should not get in the way of addressing and work through  the issues. We have to find ways of encouraging and developing confidence in the researcher, whoever the researcher is and whatever the cause of their anxiety.

‘I tried to give him a lot of support so we went through everything I could think of to make it easier, tried to talk him down from his anxiety. I don't know whether that was anything to do with dyslexia. Well, obviously it was because reading notes, for example, he couldn't do; reading a whole script he couldn't do...We rationalised it: you do the teaching and you can do that. We talked through it and it went fine. But it was a real struggle for him. Maybe it would have been the same for any PhD student...but I suspect he found it more of a struggle and he needed a lot of support.’

Research supervisor