The Digital Researcher

On 14th Feb 2011, The British Library and Vitae are running a free one-day course for postgraduate research students and research staff to help them make the most of new technologies in their research.

On the day participants will have the opportunity to gain an understanding of:

* the role that online networks can play in supporting research and researchers' careers
* how to manage your online profile (positively)
* how to build networks to support your research and career
* the range of different tools that are available to support you and your research

The event will be held at the British Library, and more information, including how to book, is available here.

Leadership in action - free non-residential course!

The Vitae London hub are running a 3-day Leadership in Action course at the London School of Economics from 15th-17th December for research students and staff. This is a non-residential course, and is completely free to attend.

The course will allow you to explore and develop your leadership skills. You will have the opportunity to look at relevant theory, practice your leadership style and receive feedback.

This course offers you the opportunity to:

- explore leadership both in theory and in practice
- work with a team of experienced facilitators from a range of career backgrounds, who will ensure you get the most out of the 3 days
- meet researchers from a variety of disciplines, backgrounds and career stages
- develop your understanding of leadership theory and how to apply it in practice
- receive feedback on your leadership style and how you can develop it
- take a few days out from your research both physically and mentally, and have some space in which to consider yourself and your next steps.

If you are interested, there is more information here, and you can book a place by e-mailing londonhub@vitae.ac.uk. There are only 36 places, and they are being filled on a first-come-first-served basis, so make sure you get in quick if you do want to go!

Cafe Scientifique - 4th November

Café Scientifique evening for PhD and post-doctoral researchers in all disciplines!

The second Café Scientifique event for PhD students and postdoctoral researchers from all disciplines is being held on Thursday 4^th November. It will be a chance for researchers to get together and meet each other in a relaxed setting. This is an informal and fun evening event involving free wine & pizza, three short presentations from researchers and some other activities such as a quiz and/or creative challenges! The presentations at this event will be from Manuela Graf (ICMS), Giammarco Campanella (School of Mathematical Sciences) and Zimei Rong (School of Engineering & Materials Science). The evening will start at 6pm at Mucci, Library Square on the Mile End campus. For further information and to book a place please contact Dr Tracy Bussoli (t.j.bussoli@qmul.ac.uk).

Courses at the School of Advanced Study

The School of Advanced Study (SAS), which is part of the University of London and based in Senate House, runs a programme of research skills training workshops which are open to researchers from other institutions working in the humanities & social sciences. These workshops cover a variety of research skills and methodologies. A pdf of the handbook detailing the workshops can be found here.

There are also some discipline-specific workhops in English, Modern Languages, History, Law and Music, many of which are open to students from outside SAS. The details of these are also in the handbook above.

A new academic year!

For any new research students reading this - Welcome to Queen Mary! And for everyone else, I hope you had a great summer whether you stayed here or headed off to more exotic locations!

The programme of Learning Institute workshops for the 2010-11 year is about to start. You should receive a wallplanner listing all the courses soon, and they can also be seen on the google calendar in the sidebar of this blog. This year we have made a bit of a change to the course booking system, to try and ensure that there are spaces on the workshops for people who want to attend. Booking is now open for courses up until Christmas, but for courses in Jan, Feb & March booking won't open until 13th December, and for courses from April - June booking won't open until 1st March 2011. On the booking site there will be a reminder of this, and an invitation to contact me if you have a very good reason for needing to book a course more than a few months in advance.

Throughout the year there will also be various events and competitions you might want to get involved with, both inside QM and outside. I will post information about those on this blog, and also on the Learning Institute PhD pages.

Please get in touch if you have any thoughts, comments, concerns or suggestions about anything to do with your experience at QM!

The Learning Institute

On 1st September 2010, Educational and Staff Development became known as The Learning Institute. This reflects the fact that we not only work with staff across the college, but also with postgraduate and undergraduate students too.

The new Learning Institute (LI) website describes all the services we offer, and also includes pages aimed at PhD students, with information about training opportunities, events, personal development planning and more.

In the near future we will be setting up an area of the site (the Learning Network) especially for research students, which will contain blogs and discussion forums on any topics you would like to talk about. This blog will be moving over to that site soon.

If you have some time, please take a look at the PhD pages on the LI site and let me know whether you think anything needs adding or changing (my contact details can be found on the LI site). I would like the pages to be a useful resource for research students, so any input would be gratefully received!

When the Learning Network is up and running, I will also be inviting research students to contribute to the blog, on any topics they feel are relevant, so if you have any ideas please let me know.

Improve your teaching skills and earn £18 an hour at Queen Mary!

The Queen Mary Careers Team is looking to recruit a PhD student to help manage the seasonal demand (Autumn Term in the first instance) for CV feedback from undergraduate students at Queen Mary.

This is a great opportunity to develop your teaching and facilitation skills, earn some cash, and improve your CV writing skills at the same time!

If you are interested, see the QM Careers blog for further information.