Vitae News: March 2021
Welcome
Welcome to the March edition of Vitae News. This issue brings the latest developments around our Vitae annual programme of events and welcomes our 2021 sponsor for the Three Minute Thesis competition. This issue also rounds up recent calls for representation, that you or colleagues may want to engage with.
Events
Connections: Getting to grips
Our first event of the year - Connections: getting to grips took place last week and was an engaging day of interactive sessions and networking, complemented by on demand videos. It was really good to meet new faces in the world of researcher development. Quite aptly this year, there was a focus on research culture, equality, diversity and inclusion, and supporting researcher careers.
“This is one of the best online training events I have attended”
“Loved a lot of the technological tools used to make these sessions interactive”
Culture, Employment and Development in Academic Research Survey (CEDARS)
A member engagement event, ‘branching out with CEDARS’, took place on Monday and gave Vitae Members the opportunity to find out more about CEDARS and the benefits and advice around running it.
Dr Anna Seabourne from the University of Huddersfield has written a handy blog as a follow-up the from her presentation at Vitae Connections Week 2020, around why and how they decided to run CEDARS. Read blog.
CEDARS is running this year from 1 April until 30 June and if you are interested in running it please contact: CEDARS@Vitae.ac.uk
Vitae Connections Week 2021 - #VitaeCon2021
We are delighted to launch the Call for Content for our contributor-led sessions which will be based around the #VitaeCon2021 themes. The Call includes workshops, on demand content and social activities will remain open until Thursday 6 May.
See the draft programme for the plenary session titles and look out for announcements of speakers to follow soon.
Connections: Policy & practice
On Thursday 20 May we will be holding our next event: Connections: Policy and practice.
This event is for all professionals in roles supporting or leading the development of researchers and research, who would like to broaden their understanding of evaluation and impact of researcher development to inform institutional policy and practice. Register your interest.
IPO Live lectures
For any doctoral candidates or early career researchers who have missed the Vitae and the IPO live lectures, there will be two more taking place on Thursday 15 April (tailored for STEM researchers) and Friday 16 April 2021 at 1400 GMT (tailored for AHSS researchers).
The free of charge lectures help doctoral and early career researchers increase their Intellectual Property (IP) knowledge and facilitate relationships within institutions to support the management and development of IP.
Vitae Three Minute® Thesis Competition - 3MT® sponsor for 2021
We are delighted to announce that Taylor & Francis will once again be sponsoring the Vitae Three Minute Thesis Competition (3MT®).
The competition represents the culmination of doctoral candidate finalists from Vitae Member institutions articulating the findings and importance of their research within just three minutes. The prestigious final will take place this year on Friday 10 September -the last day of Vitae Connections Week 2021.
Register your interest to run 3MT® at your organisation
UK community representation needed
Research England and the Office for Students (OfS) are looking for two postgraduate research students and four general panel members to support their joint funding competition to improve access and participation for Black, Asian and minority ethnic students in postgraduate research study. Applications should be submitted by midday 12 April 2021.
You may not be a researcher or innovator but there are plenty of roles that still make significant contributions to research and innovation, and if this is the case, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) want to hear from you for their compilation of 101 people, doing 101 different jobs.
If you’re involved in costing research projects, TALENT would like to hear from you. They are a project that represents the largest ever investment into technicians in higher education, whose specialist skills often go unrecognised.
They are running a survey to gather views to inform thinking about technical skills for the future and if you are also interested in taking part in an interview or focus group, please contact: jo.edwards@luciditysolutions.co.uk.
Other news
This week the Government has launched an independent review into UK research bureaucracy to identify why red tape has increased across the UK’s research system. The review looks at practical solutions to help alleviate researchers of these bureaucratic issues including overly complicated grant forms, to become more streamlined, dynamic, diverse and transparent.
The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) has published some new advice on doctoral standards for research students and supervisors in response to doctoral candidates expressing concern about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their ability to carry out research and complete their studies on time.
