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We love a plan! In our Introduction to Public Engagement course, we introduced you to planning using a logic model. In this practical session, we’ll use this tool in exercises that will allow you to think about why you want to engage, the outcomes and impact you want to achieve, who you want to engage with and how to reach them.

We’ll look at how to run your project efficiently and how you might evaluate to learn and evidence your success. We’ll also consider the places you run events in, the resources you might need, tips on event planning and how you can make your engagement more inclusive.

You don’t need to come with a plan, we’ll start with hypothetical challenges to spark thoughts and ideas and share learning together.

The course will be run by members of the Public Engagement team - Lucinda Spokes, Selen Etingu, Diogo Gomes and Claudia Antolini. As part of this course, we will provide information on how we support public engagement across the University.

The Public Engagement Starter Fund is an exciting opportunity for University of Cambridge researchers to apply for small grants to undertake innovative public engagement with research activities.

As part of this year's applications the public engagement team offers 3 drop-in sessions for potential applicants to ask questions about their work, eligibility and the application process.

Think about all those people milling around at festivals, networking events, conferences, open days and social gatherings. Would you like to make them curious about your research? What if you could say or do something to capture their attention; make them want to engage with, understand and remember something of your research? This workshop will explore the performative skills of busking and how we may use and adapt these to engage transient audiences and make them curious to find out more about our research. Don’t worry, you don’t need to sing, play an instrument or swallow fire; just have a passion for your research, a desire to engage, and a willingness to play.

Sarah is passionate about the art and science of communication and eloquential is her rattle bag of knowledge, skills and experience which she uses to train, coach and facilitate. Sarah collects research from areas such as psychology and neuroscience, along with practitioners’ experience from the performing arts to fill her bag of tricks, tips and advice. Sarah has been involved in public engagement since 2006, working closely with the Cambridge University. She is also a peripatetic teacher of communication and performance skills in schools, and a co-host of a podcast called Gin and Topic.

Are you an academic, researcher or PhD candidate who would like to build a media profile and take your research to a global public audience by writing for The Conversation?

The Conversation is a news analysis and opinion website with content written by academics working with professional journalists. It is an open access, independent media charity funded by more than 80 UK and European universities.

In this interactive session we'll take you through what The Conversation is - our origins and aims; what we do and why.

We’ll look at why you should communicate your research to the public and take you through The Conversation’s unique, collaborative editorial process.

We’ll give you tips on style, tone and structure (with examples), look at how to pitch (with examples) and look at different approaches and article types.

• To book your space head over to: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/university-of-cambridge-the-conversation-media-training-registration-636403338517

This is a training for those in Arts and Humanities.

An introductory session looking at impact in the Arts and Humanities, offering a guide to the Michaelmas call-out for Impact projects from the School of Arts and Humanities.

Impact is now a requirement for numerous grant applications, the REF, and academic life in general. It can make a useful and dynamic contribution to the long term development of many academic projects as well as bringing partnerships and funding opportunities.

This session will discuss how impact is defined according to the AHRC and REF. It will also discuss previous successful impact projects, outline the connections between research and impact, funding strategies, and the differences between pathways to impact and impact objectives. Many different types of impact will be covered, including work with public policy, public engagement, the media, and commercialisation.

The eight University of Cambridge Museums (UCM) and Botanic Garden represent the UK’s highest concentration of internationally important collections outside London. With more than five million works of art, artefacts, and specimens, the collections have supported nearly 300 years of investigation into the world around us. Today, we work to deepen understanding of our world, inspire new thinking, and address local and global challenges.

How can researchers get involved with the work of the museums? Or make links to the varied collections? This training session will introduce participants to museums in general as well as work and collections of the UCM.

Sarah-Jane Harknett co-ordinates evaluation projects across the University of Cambridge Museums. Alongside this role, she also heads up the Public Engagement programmes at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

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.

From Surviving to Thriving: strategies to do your research and wellbeing just a little bit better.

While a joyful curiosity might be the fuel of research, doing it day-to-day can be really tough. The purpose of this programme is to help researchers move – even just a little bit – from a sense of merely surviving within the research process to thriving within it. Eschewing the hyperbole of the self-help industry, this programme provides participants with practical tools and strategies grounded in the psychological literature to help you do your research and nurture your wellbeing just a little bit better.

Whilst this programme of five sessions has been designed as a set, with each building on the one before – as participants move from a sense of ‘surviving’ to ‘thriving’ – each individual session is standalone, meaning you can book and attend the whole series or just those which you think may be particularly useful.

Session 1: Developing Your Resilience

This first session might be useful if you have a sense of being stuck in a hole and want to stop digging. To do this, it explores what might be seen as the ‘Six Cs’ of Resilience. In the process, the session helps you, amongst other things, to: apply an essential three-step ‘coping mantra’ for when things go wrong; develop individually more useful perspectives about your research to boost resilience; formulate individual strategies to boost your senses of community and wellbeing.

From Surviving to Thriving: strategies to do your research and wellbeing just a little bit better.

While a joyful curiosity might be the fuel of research, doing it day-to-day can be really tough. The purpose of this programme is to help researchers move – even just a little bit – from a sense of merely surviving within the research process to thriving within it. Eschewing the hyperbole of the self-help industry, this programme provides participants with practical tools and strategies grounded in the psychological literature to help you do your research and nurture your wellbeing just a little bit better.

Whilst this programme of five sessions has been designed as a set, with each building on the one before – as participants move from a sense of ‘surviving’ to ‘thriving’ – each individual session is standalone, meaning you can book and attend the whole series or just those which you think may be particularly useful.

Managing Your Procrastination

This session aims to help you manage your procrastination by:

• Exploring the two fundamental principles to overcome putting things off;
• Helping you build your own individual toolkit of strategies and simple ‘tricks and tips’ to help you manage your procrastination;
• Helping you reflect on why you procrastinate and the most important thing you need to know to overcome it.

From Surviving to Thriving: strategies to do your research and wellbeing just a little bit better.

While a joyful curiosity might be the fuel of research, doing it day-to-day can be really tough. The purpose of this programme is to help researchers move – even just a little bit – from a sense of merely surviving within the research process to thriving within it. Eschewing the hyperbole of the self-help industry, this programme provides participants with practical tools and strategies grounded in the psychological literature to help you do your research and nurture your wellbeing just a little bit better.

Whilst this programme of five sessions has been designed as a set, with each building on the one before – as participants move from a sense of ‘surviving’ to ‘thriving’ – each individual session is standalone, meaning you can book and attend the whole series or just those which you think may be particularly useful.

Session 3: Increasing Your Productivity

This sessions aims to help you get research done by: -

• Investigating and applying two fundamental principles of productivity;
• Individually tailoring your own productivity strategies based on how you work best;
• Highlighting simple ‘tricks and tips’ to have a better, more productive day.

From Surviving to Thriving: strategies to do your research and wellbeing just a little bit better.

While a joyful curiosity might be the fuel of research, doing it day-to-day can be really tough. The purpose of this programme is to help researchers move – even just a little bit – from a sense of merely surviving within the research process to thriving within it. Eschewing the hyperbole of the self-help industry, this programme provides participants with practical tools and strategies grounded in the psychological literature to help you do your research and nurture your wellbeing just a little bit better.

Whilst this programme of five sessions has been designed as a set, with each building on the one before – as participants move from a sense of ‘surviving’ to ‘thriving’ – each individual session is standalone, meaning you can book and attend the whole series or just those which you think may be particularly useful.

Session 4: Cultivating Your Happiness

This session aims to help you move, even just a little bit, towards a sense of thriving by using a definition of happiness grounded in the psychological literature and applying its proven practical strategies to help you do so. In the process, you will reflect on and apply strategies to cultivate your own happiness; explore the perhaps surprising correlation between and meaning to see your research in a new light; rewrite your to-do list in terms of nurturing your happiness (and productivity).

From Surviving to Thriving: strategies to do your research and wellbeing just a little bit better.

While a joyful curiosity might be the fuel of research, doing it day-to-day can be really tough. The purpose of this programme is to help researchers move – even just a little bit – from a sense of merely surviving within the research process to thriving within it. Eschewing the hyperbole of the self-help industry, this programme provides participants with practical tools and strategies grounded in the psychological literature to help you do your research and nurture your wellbeing just a little bit better.

Whilst this programme of five sessions has been designed as a set, with each building on the one before – as participants move from a sense of ‘surviving’ to ‘thriving’ – each individual session is standalone, meaning you can book and attend the whole series or just those which you think may be particularly useful.

Session 5: The Emotionally Intelligent Researcher

As the final one of the programme, this session simultaneously looks back and forward by aiming to embed previous sessions’ learning to sustain your progress. As a self-contained unit, it also helps you develop your emotional intelligence by providing you with strategies to work effectively with others and develop, amongst others, your listening and assertiveness skills.

The Schools of the Arts & Humanities and the Humanities & Social Sciences have organised this event to help you settle into the Cambridge research environment and get a head start on your studies.

We will primarily focus on helping you: -

• Understand and set appropriate expectations with your supervisor

• Refine your thesis and research positionality

• Identify training and development pathways

• Create a professional and personal development plan.

This event is designed to complement other departmental and College inductions which you may have had, namely by offering a chance to begin your planning and personal development.

Getting published is a central part of being a researcher. Understanding where and why to publisht is crucial to developing an effective stragegy that will help you realise your research and/or career ambitions.

With this in mind, the workshop explores strategy around the question of ‘high impact’, and the various meanings (formal and informal) this implies, the limitations of impact metrics and the importance of understanding publishing cultures across academia, and how these vary..

Getting published is a central part of being a researcher. Peer-reviewed publications allow researchers to communicate their research to the broader research community, and thus, contribute to the body of work within their field.

This workshop is part 2 of 3, and concerns the process of peer-review manuscript preparation and the submital process, including peer-review.

This is the first of two workshops designed to develop your understanding of the technicalities and the process of getting your research published.

In this workshop, we examine the technical aspects of writing up your research in a format appropriate for publication. You will learn about the importance of following journal guidelines and house style, and the value of using a clear structure to frame your paper. You will also receive guidance on how to produce clear writing in a register appropriate for the readership.

It is possible to attend this course as an individual workshop, although we would encourage you to attend the second workshop in the series Getting published II: Impact and Peer-review.

This interactive workshop will support participants to make the most of short periods of study, admin, teaching preparation or research time. Participants work together to create a personalised plan of action combining High Intensity Productivity (HIP) with focused goal setting. The session considers the biggest reasons for procrastination and participants learn how to break larger research, teaching, admin and study activities in to manageable and achievable tasks. The session benefits from integrated protected self-development time to trial the tools learned in the session.

There is also the opportunity to reflect on how participants will implement their learning in order to make the most of future opportunities and avoid procrastination.

“The whole course was useful, the delivery in terms of sharing with others and actually completing activities (productive work) made it a great experience. The practical as well as theoretical made you realise you can actually do better.”

PhD Researcher and Clinician, University of Leicester 2020

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In this session, aimed at postgraduate researchers, we will talk about Academic Misconduct at the University of Cambridge and explain the definitions of plagiarism and self-plagiarism. We will go on to explore some famous examples of plagiarism in different contexts to get everyone thinking. Then we will look at some specific examples of academic plagiarism and how things can go wrong. Finally, we will look at ways to avoid the pitfalls and finish off with some practical tips. There will be time for questions at the end of the presentation too. By the end of this session, you will be able to avoid plagiarism and have a good idea of how to improve your writing, referencing and data management skills to prevent accidental plagiarism in your work.

Do you feel like there are never enough hours in the day to complete your research project? Are you struggling to balance your work and personal life while still making progress towards your career goals? Look no further than this course on Effective Time and Project Management for Postgraduate Research Students.

This course aims to equip you with the tools and techniques required to effectively manage your time and research projects. Through interactive lectures and practical exercises, you will learn how to prioritize tasks, manage your workload, and develop effective time management strategies that can be applied to any research project.

With a focus on project management, this course will cover topics such as setting SMART goals, developing project timelines, and identifying and managing project risks. Additionally, you will learn how to identify time-wasters, manage interruptions, and optimize your work environment for maximum productivity.

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Research in the 21st century is global, and research teams are intercultural. 35% of Cambridge research students are from outside the EU; and postdocs are the most diverse group by nationality, representing almost 100 countries. This diversity is one of the University’s biggest strengths. Yet intercultural communication is not without its pitfalls and misunderstandings. It takes conscious discipline to think about one’s own cultural assumptions and to try to make sense of others'.

This workshop will give you some tools to help identify where national culture might be having an influence on your professional and social interactions, where common misunderstandings can occur, and how to address potential challenges. The content of the session is informed by research form intercultural studies and refers to culture as a framework of shared values, attitudes and behaviours. It explores the nature of generalisations and the relationship between national culture, other layers of diversity (e g gender, professional, generational differences) and personal values.

A recommended course by the Researcher Development Programme as part of the University of Cambridge's subscription to LinkedIn Learning.

The course can be accessed here.

A curated collection of recommended courses by Researcher Development as part of the University of Cambridge's subscription to LinkedIn Learning.

The collection can be accessed here.

A curated collection of recommended courses by Researcher Development as part of the University of Cambridge's subscription to LinkedIn Learning.

The collection can be accessed here.