Researcher Development Programme (RDP) course timetable

Let’s face it; being a researcher can be stressful! Not only are you managing the ups and downs of life in the lab, but you are probably balancing work and life and also have one eye on the future and what comes after your PhD…

This workshop is designed to help you build emotional resilience. You probably already have some strategies in place so we will reflect on the highs and lows you have already experienced, look at some of the theories of resilience and consider how we can better support your coping and wellbeing.

• Understand what resilience is
• Consider why researchers need to be resilient
• Identify when we have been resilient
• Be aware of the three Cs of stress hardiness
• Start to develop our resilience toolkits

When opportunities come along, do you feel confident about working with people to get what you need? This course gives you a practical insight into the application of professional communication to everyday life, learning how to persuade and influence others effectively. Improving your listening and communication skills is advantageous for both your personal and your professional life.

This workshop is led by Richard Mullender, an external trainer who formerly worked for the Metropolitan Police as a hostage negotiator, and then as Lead Trainer at the National Crisis & Hostage Negotiation Unit in Scotland Yard. By looking at everyday scenarios as well as life-or-death negotiations from his professional experience – e.g. with terrorists for the release of hostages or with someone threatening to commit suicide – Richard demonstrates how to listen for ‘levers’ that help you to persuade and influence, and to secure the best possible outcome.

Outcomes:

• Be able to use communication consciously to persuade and influence effectively
• Recognize when others are using persuasive communication techniques
• Feel more confident in presenting yourself well to others and in gaining support

Do you get the results you want from your communication with others at work? Are you able to talk with confidence in meetings and interviews? Do you have a high level of impact when speaking in public?

This individually focused and completely confidential one-to-one coaching session will help you refine your presentation skills, help you speak more confidently as an emerging leader in your research field, and develop new approaches to your communication in a wide range of professional situations. Constructive feedback will give you insight into your speaking style, how you come across to others, and how well your ideas are communicated. Coaching will focus on your individual requirements ranging from practical points about elocution and vocal projection, to holding the attention of a room, to structuring a compelling presentation.

To truly engage with literature at doctoral level it is crucial to develop a ‘critical’ approach that enables a strict and thus manageable selection of literature, and the development of interpretative themes by which to categorise and narrate the literature. Both aspects of critical reading and thinking often form the foundation of the thesis, given it both context and justification. Indeed, how a student approaches the literature is itself an integral part of establishing and evolving a unique contribution to knowledge.

This course seeks to help students develop their critical reading skills, and to deploy tactics and strategies that can accelerate the process of literature-based research without sacrificing detail and depth necessary for a doctoral thesis.

Do you get the results you want from your communication with others at work? Are you able to talk with confidence in meetings and interviews? Do you have a high level of impact when speaking in public?

This individually focused and completely confidential one-to-one coaching session will help you refine your presentation skills, help you speak more confidently as an emerging leader in your research field, and develop new approaches to your communication in a wide range of professional situations. Constructive feedback will give you insight into your speaking style, how you come across to others, and how well your ideas are communicated. Coaching will focus on your individual requirements ranging from practical points about elocution and vocal projection, to holding the attention of a room, to structuring a compelling presentation.

Do you get the results you want from your communication with others at work? Are you able to talk with confidence in meetings and interviews? Do you have a high level of impact when speaking in public?

This individually focused and completely confidential one-to-one coaching session will help you refine your presentation skills, help you speak more confidently as an emerging leader in your research field, and develop new approaches to your communication in a wide range of professional situations. Constructive feedback will give you insight into your speaking style, how you come across to others, and how well your ideas are communicated. Coaching will focus on your individual requirements ranging from practical points about elocution and vocal projection, to holding the attention of a room, to structuring a compelling presentation.

A thorough awareness of issues relating to research ethics and research integrity are essential to producing excellent research. This session will provide an introduction to the ethical responsibilities of researchers at the University and explore issues of good research practice, research integrity and research misconduct. It will be interactive, using case studies to better understand key ethical issues and challenges in all areas.

The course will:

• explore the issue of research misconduct in academia and facilitate discussion of why and how it occurs
• explain the University and national expectations around research integrity and examine how this effects researchers
• discuss some of the challenges to the integrity of research and ask what individuals, groups and institutions can do to tackle them
• introduce the University’s research ethics system

The course will be delivered by the Research Governance Team in the Research Strategy Office.

Do you get the results you want from your communication with others at work? Are you able to talk with confidence in meetings and interviews? Do you have a high level of impact when speaking in public?

This individually focused and completely confidential one-to-one coaching session will help you refine your presentation skills, help you speak more confidently as an emerging leader in your research field, and develop new approaches to your communication in a wide range of professional situations. Constructive feedback will give you insight into your speaking style, how you come across to others, and how well your ideas are communicated. Coaching will focus on your individual requirements ranging from practical points about elocution and vocal projection, to holding the attention of a room, to structuring a compelling presentation.

When opportunities come along, do you feel confident about working with people to get what you need? This course gives you a practical insight into the application of professional communication to everyday life, learning how to persuade and influence others effectively. Improving your listening and communication skills is advantageous for both your personal and your professional life.

This workshop is led by Richard Mullender, an external trainer who formerly worked for the Metropolitan Police as a hostage negotiator, and then as Lead Trainer at the National Crisis & Hostage Negotiation Unit in Scotland Yard. By looking at everyday scenarios as well as life-or-death negotiations from his professional experience – e.g. with terrorists for the release of hostages or with someone threatening to commit suicide – Richard demonstrates how to listen for ‘levers’ that help you to persuade and influence, and to secure the best possible outcome.

Outcomes:

• Be able to use communication consciously to persuade and influence effectively
• Recognize when others are using persuasive communication techniques
• Feel more confident in presenting yourself well to others and in gaining support

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: Improving Attention
Mindfulness Workshop: Productive Decisions

Mindfulness Workshop: Productive Decisions - Making mindful choices that support your goals and wellbeing

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: Better Sleep
Mindfulness Workshop: Keeping Calm
Mindfulness Workshop: Improving Attention

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

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