The Postgraduate Research Training Programme in the Faculty of Humanities offers opportunities for PhD students to develop themselves both as researchers and as professionals. We offer training to improve your academic and professional skills, enhance your employability and raise your awareness about the research environment. We even give you credit for it!
Our established programme of academic and professional skills training covers a wide range of topics from Research Ethics to undertaking your Viva, from Getting Published to Giving a Paper. The sessions are mapped against the Vitae Researcher Development Framework , developed in conjunction with Research Councils UK. Training sessions are listed on Gradbook and are advertised through the hums-pgr mailing list which you are automatically subscribed to when you enroll. You can also learn a new language through our Centre for Language Study and undertake training which could lead to teaching through our central Doctoral College .
Our training is available face to face and online through Blackboard .
Training should be understood as an integral part of the PhD. At the start of each new year of study we ask you to assess your current skills. You will undertake an Academic Needs Analysis to help you to identify the skills you would like to improve. We view ‘training’ as more than just sitting through a training session so we encourage you to think creatively about opportunities for developing your skills. For example, you can attend a conference or research seminar, start a student group, give papers/presentations ... and of course, attend our Graduate School training sessions.
You can gain credits for attending sessions, completing online versions of sessions, and for undertaking personal development activities. The idea is to give you the opportunity to reflect on your activities during candidature – what are you doing, when are you doing it and what are you getting out of it. The minimum number of credits that you should look to attain during your period of candidature is 60.
For more information about training sessions, online training and accreditation, please consult the Training Programme booklet available on the Humanities Graduate School Sharepoint site .
For more information about these programmes visit our taught programmes pages .
The Postgraduate Research Training Programme booklet contains information about all our sessions, accreditation, online materials, and more.
The guide to online training maps our face to face sessions to online training materials, with hyperlinks to the relevant Blackboard locations.
The Blackboard course PGR-RS: Research Skills for Postgraduate Researchers contains online versions of Humanities training sessions and interactive courses from outside provider Epigeum.
If you are a current student, click here to access our intranet site
The Humanities training sessions are genuinely relevant, informative and brilliantly tailored not only to the needs of the doctoral student, but also with an eye on your later career and employability. As a former teacher, "training" was most definitely not an inspiring word, but I would recommend these sessions 100%. A great deal of thought has obviously gone into what skills we realistically need to develop to succeed, the training is a great resource that is undoubtedly worth taking advantage of. You're actually missing out if you don't!