Thursday, February 28, 2019
The Senate Room, Glasgow, United Kingdom
Thursday, February 28, 2019
The Senate Room, Glasgow, United Kingdom
Intended audience: PGRs, PGR convenors, Deans of Graduate Studies, Supervisors, leads for Doctoral Training Centres, PGRs and professional services staff with a PGR support or recruitment focus. This may also be useful for colleagues engaged with writing Athena Swan submissions or REF environment statements.
Over
half of the respondents to the 2017 UofG PGR survey (PRES) indicated that they
aspire to a career in academia. Within the University, we want to support
that aspiration. At the same time, we know that only a small proportion will
remain in HE in the longer term and that there are a huge range of other
exciting opportunities out there for researchers to use their skills, talents
and enthusiasm.
When we tell new students this at Induction, does it sound like an invitation to explore or a depressing suggestion that they might be ‘wasting’ the next three years of their lives in a highly competitive environment with a low chance of success? And what about when someone talks about ‘leaving’ academia. Is this perceived as a failure? By themselves, their peers and supervisors? There is increasingly a demand from funders that the PGR experience ‘trains’ researchers to work in a variety of careers and yet Supervisors often don’t feel equipped or supported to provide alternative careers advice.
So how do we balance these tensions as an Institution? What can we do to change the way in which we communicate and share the opportunities that are out there? This discussion event will share ideas and invite suggestions from the community at UofG and beyond, in order to shape future institutional plans and activity.
PROGRAMME
9.15 Welcome Mary Beth Kneafsey, PGR Strategy Manager
What do our researchers do post-PhD? Katrina Gardner, Careers Adviser for Researchers
Lord Kelvin Adam Smith Destinations Film
Panel discussion
Gillian Daly, Knowledge Exchange Partnerships Manager, Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities
Mathis Riehle, Molecular Cell and Systems Biology
Becky Douglas, Trainee Patent Attorney, Hindles
Dickon Copsey, College of Social Sciences Employability Officer
Ivano Bongiovanni, Research Fellow, Adam Smith Business School
10.45 Coffee
Group Discussions and action
11.45 Conclusions and close
The Senate Room
Main Building, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, G12 8QQ United Kingdom
1st floor of the South of the Main University Building.