Researcher Development Programme (RDP) course timetable

Wanting to learn more about the peer-review system and gain a core skill every researcher should possess? This course is designed specifically for STEMM postdocs and researchers at an early stage of their career and with little or no experience of reviewing manuscripts for journals.

You will learn how to review research manuscripts quickly and effectively, what editors expect in a review, what to include in written comments to editors and authors and how long you should spend reviewing a manuscript. Following this course, you will know the practical methods for reviewing a manuscript swiftly and successfully.

Outcomes:
- Gain a score skill that every STEMM researcher should know
- Understand how the peer-review system works
- Develop a better understanding of how to write your own manuscript

Wanting to learn more about the peer-review system and gain a core skill every researcher should possess? This course is designed specifically for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS) postdocs and researchers at an early stage of their career with little or no experience of reviewing manuscripts for journals. Focus is on subjects covered by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council.

You will learn how to review research manuscripts quickly and effectively, what editors expect in a review, what to include in written comments to editors and authors and how long you should spend reviewing a manuscript. Following this course, which explores the results from a survey of 60 editors of AHSS journals, you will know the practical methods for reviewing a manuscript swiftly and successfully.

Outcomes:
- Gain a core skill that every AHSS researcher should have
- Understand how the peer-review system works
- Develop a better understanding of how to write your own manuscripts

Please not that these courses are only for University of Cambridge students (undergraduate and postgraduate), who are affiliated to a Cambridge college.

This is one of four "Mindfulness Workshop" sessions. You can attend one - four of these sessions as you wish, in any order. Although not designed as a course, the four sessions are complimentary and cover different aspects of mindfulness.

Please do not book on to the same session twice.

View complete timetable here

The other sessions are as follows:
Mindfulness Workshop: Improving Attention
Mindfulness Workshop: Better Sleep
Mindfulness Workshop: Productive Decisions

Please not that these courses are only for University of Cambridge students (undergraduate and postgraduate), who are affiliated to a Cambridge college.

This is one of four "Mindfulness Workshop" sessions. You can attend one - four of these sessions as you wish, in any order. Although not designed as a course, the four sessions are complimentary and cover different aspects of mindfulness.

Please do not book on to the same session twice.

View complete timetable here

The other sessions are as follows:
Mindfulness Workshop: Keeping Calm
Mindfulness Workshop: Better Sleep
Mindfulness Workshop: Productive Decisions

This session will be an introduction to Public Engagement and Policy. The session will start with a short introduction to Public Engagement and Stakeholder involvement. It will then focus on how researchers can get started in engaging with policymakers and explore synergies between governmental structures and higher education institutions in the UK. The session will be co-led by Dr. Maja Spanu, a Junior Research Fellow in International Relations.

The time has come to start writing your thesis, but you may still be in the lab finishing experiments and/or writing papers for publication. How are you going to start writing your thesis and submit on time? This half day workshop is designed to get you thinking and planning your thesis writing, as well as discuss other important factors, which need to be considered when writing up.

Why this course might make a difference
While the first year report is arguably the first step in completing your PhD, the process of taking this first step can be fraught with uncertainty, particularly if you’re still ‘finding your feet’.

Whether you are feeling confused about the first year report – or just want to become a more effective writer – the overall purpose of this course is to help you improve the writing both of your first year report and of your research in general.

Previous Participant Feedback:

“It helped me benchmark my progress against others, understand my specific challenges and get motivated to just write now, perfect later.”

“It really got me started on writing and gave me a better sense of where I was and where I was heading with my first year report and PhD overall.”

“To hear what are the expectations for the first year report, and what it should be included there.”

How can you make the most of your postdoc years at Cambridge? What does a strategic postdoc look like? What could you be doing now to be more strategic, intentional and agentive during your time at Cambridge?
This workshop explores how to navigate the research landscape, how to think and act strategically, and how to develop mental and emotional discipline for coping with the demands of the competitive research environment. We will explore the career journeys of former postdocs and see that there’s no one recipe for success, but there are common ingredients. This workshop is for postdoctoral researchers who want to get to and be prepared for the next step in their careers, whether that’s within academia or beyond.

Outcomes:

• Begin to take charge of your own career path
• Understand the many actions you could be taking now to achieve a career within or beyond academia
• Consider the important link between mental and emotional health and career advancement

Feedback:

“It encouraged an overall view of thinking about my career and what I want out of it and what I am good at. It also covered examples of people who stayed in academia as well as those who did not, so that I was able to consider the pros and cons of more than just one route.”

“I'm right at the start of my post-doc and it helped me to think about what I wanted to get out of the next few years in terms of my career.”

As a researcher, you are expected not only to run experiments, but also write regularly. Establishing a writing regular routine can be difficult, especially when experiments are running well. This half day workshop will explore the different writing techniques, tips and tricks, productive writers use regularly to keep on track with their writing commitments.

Do you want to increase the probability of completing your PhD on time and be happier doing it? In this workshop, Dr Sue Jackson will share and discuss these 'secrets' which the aim of allowing you to reflect on what you can easily do to help yourself achieve this aim.

Outcomes:

• An understanding of the 7 key characteristics of the students who are most successful
• An action plan for being more effective in each of these areas

Dr Elizabeth English is offering a new weekly DROP-IN MEDITATION session, Wednesdays at 5.30pm.

These sessions are open to anyone who has learned meditation, especially participants who have previously attended the eight-week Mindfulness Programme. The Meditation sessions are not designed as a course, they are weekly one-off sessions, and you are welcome attend as many (or as few) as you wish.

Class format: starting with meditation, sharing experience in 2s/3s, gathering questions and topics, exploring topics together, final meditation.

You do not need to book. You are welcome to turn up to any of the sessions starting 5.30pm. Class will be approximately 75 mins.

See times and dates below.

View the Mindfulness Timetable here

This one-day course focuses on the structure of good scientific writing. Including writing exercises as an integral part of the workshop, we will look at the practical process of writing, the nature of scientific publishing, and the importance of editing. The day will finish with a group editing session in which you apply the ideas you have learnt by editing each other's work.

For the group editing session you will need to write a 300-word abstract about your work in advance, and bring it with you as a printout (see 'Prerequisites' below for details).

REGISTRATION starts at 9.00am on the day. Please ensure you arrive on time as latecomers may be refused entry.

Outcomes:

• Develop skills for producing high-quality scientific papers aimed at the world's top journals
• Understand the structure of good communication at the level of sentences, paragraphs, abstracts and entire papers
• Apply these ideas to your own work

Presenting is a crucial skill for researchers, yet it is often something that even experienced scholars struggle with. This interactive workshop is designed for people who already have some experience of presenting and the basic principles involved, but would like to develop their skills in this area to a higher level.

This workshop provides the opportunity for practical experience of presenting within a supportive environment. During the workshop, you will be given time to design and deliver a short (5-10 minutes) presentation to a small audience comprised of your fellow researchers.

This course is designed for students with some presentation experience. It is possible to attend this course as an individual workshop, although we would recommend that you try to attend the series starting with the Basic Presentation Skills course.

Are you ready to lead others confidently in whatever leadership position you may find yourself in?

This workshop draws on insight gained from Postdocs: An Initial Guide to Leadership and Postdocs: Self-Leadership and considers how to apply different skills, strengths, and styles of leadership as well as the strategies of self-leadership to enable you to thoughtfully and self-assuredly lead others. This workshop will help you cultivate a more profound and extensive portfolio of leadership capabilities and a deeper understanding of how to motivate people and to get the best out of them.

It is possible to attend this as an individual workshop, although we would recommend that you try to attend the series starting with Postdocs: An Initial Guide to Leadership and Postdocs: Self-Leadership.

Outcomes:

• Understand the key components of being led and leading others.
• Expand and extend your skills, strengths, abilities and style in detail so that you can lead others now and in the future.
• Apply self-knowledge, awareness and techniques in the deployment of your leadership skills with others.

The last hurdle, your viva examination, but what will it be like? What will the examiners ask? How can you prepare for it?

This workshop provides participants with an insight into the process, and helps them understand what to expect within a doctoral degree viva, including a discussion on the type and nature of questions most-likely to be posed by examiners.

This course is not suitable for students in their first year, and we strongly advise against students in their second year from attending.

Presenting is a crucial skill for researchers, yet it is often something that even experienced scholars struggle with. This interactive workshop is designed for people who already have some experience of presenting and the basic principles involved, but would like to develop their skills in this area to a higher level.

This workshop provides the opportunity for practical experience of presenting within a supportive environment. During the workshop, you will be given time to design and deliver a short (5-10 minutes) presentation to a small audience comprised of your fellow researchers.

This course is designed for students with some presentation experience. It is possible to attend this course as an individual workshop, although we would recommend that you try to attend the series starting with the Basic Presentation Skills course.

Poster presentations are a well-established format for presenting research findings within STEM subjects. The past few years has witnessed a growth in poster presentations across a number of AHSS conferences. Given the infancy of this phenomena, it stands that a number of researchers within AHSS remain unsure on the question of content design and delivery.

During the session, therefore, we will explore what makes a successful poster presentation in AHSS and examine how key components of a poster can be designed to make the poster more effective to your target audience.

This is a beginner’s course covering the basics of poster presentations.