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