40 Must-read academic blogs for researchers and PhD students
Editor40 popular blogs by academics (who also make the most of Twitter)
Designing ‘attention points’ in academic work: Four principles for improving tables, graphs, charts and diagrams.
Four top-level design principles to consider when constructing tables, charts, graphs, or diagrams.
Coping strategies for full time workers turned PhD students
Have you given up a great full time job to do your PhD? Some of you might have done this fairly recently – what changes can you expect?
Five steps to meeting the challenges of maintaining an appropriate writing voice
Daniel Beaudoin shares five simple steps to keep the “me” in check
Careers advice from the (dystopian) future
Great blog from UCL Careers service, once again drawing inspiration from our favourite streaming service.
No nine to five job: working as a senior teaching fellow AND in the restaurant business
Inspiring story of Dr Sayeda Abu-Amero who has a PhD in fungal virology, and has been balancing teaching, research and a new career.
A number of freely available tools can help you improve your literature review routine and stay on top of published research
A short sequence of steps and flagged a number of freely available online tools that will help researchers to easily integrate an effective literature review and discovery routine into their work lives.
How to sail smoothly from academia to industry
To beat the stiff competition, highlight your skills in collaboration, teamwork and meeting deadlines.
Communicating your research toolkit – The Health Foundation
Want to communicate your health research in a better way in 2018? This resource from The Health Foundation is the tool you need.
Lies are fast, truth is slow: the importance of mastering the rhythms of academic life and work
A unique perspective encouraged by science; the ability to slow down, freeze-frame, and dissect things.
Grant Proposals (or Give me the money!)
Article from the Writing Centre, helping you write and revise grant proposals for research funding
How to make the most of an academic conference – a checklist for before, during and after the meeting
Going to an academic conference is an exciting opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals and exchange stimulating ideas. Marta Teperek provides a checklist of things to do at each of these stages.
Spot light on the NIHR Research Design Service
National Institute for Health Research We are the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) we fund health and care research and translate discoveries into practical products, treatments, devices and procedures, involving patients and the public in all our work. We ensure the NHS is able to support the research of other funders to encourage broader…
What is Good Clinical Practice (GCP) Training? Do I need it?
Good Clinical Practice (GCP) is the international ethical, scientific and practical standard to which all clinical research is conducted
Invitation to join CHAIN
An informal, multi-professional mutual support network in the field of health & Social Care
Six academic writing habits that will boost productivity
What’s the secret to a productive spell of writing? Chris Smith shares insights gleaned from interviews with a diverse group of academics, from which a number of common academic writing habits stood out.
We need to talk about disability and chronic illness during the PhD
If you developed a chronic illness and an associated disability during your studies… where do you turn? How do you confront the challenge?
De-stuffing your writing: or the The bumper list of words and phrases you could delete to make your writing more concise
This post is by Dr Katherine Firth, research fellow at Latrobe University. Katherine blogs over at Research Voodoo. As you probably already know Inger, Shaun and I are writing a book about Academic Writing Trouble and How to Fix It that distills the advice you would get if you took us out for lunch and asked…
Eight reasons why a PhD by publication is often a good model
A PhD by publication allows you to write for real and varied audiences, inviting intellectual exchanges that benefit your research.
NIHR Training and Career Development Webinars
These webinars are designed for current and aspiring NIHR trainees and cover a variety of topics to help researchers develop their research careers
A look behind the scenes – how Alzheimer’s Research UK decides what research to fund
Earlier this year, Alzheimer’s Research UK offered dementia researchers in the early stages of their career a chance to sit in on a meeting of our Grant Review Board. Dr Lauren Walker took the opportunity…
I want to leave academia – what’s next?
Good advice on how NOT to be an academic when you finish your PhD is pretty thin on the ground. Many supervisors have never done anything else, and/or are not well enough connected with industry to know what is ‘hot’. Careers centres at universities tend to shape their offerings around the huge undergraduate cohort, who…
Write Your Way Out
Is there such a thing as ‘writers block’? How can you come out of the other end?
“TEXT!!” What can Love Island teach us about careers?
I assume you watched Love Island, right? It seems we all did. And if you didn’t (Don’t worry it will be back in the summer). Cancel all plans and you’ll be caught up in no time. It’ll be well worth it. Much like David Attenborough’s Planet Earth, Love Island offers new perspectives on our world,…
Why do a Clinical Research Training Fellowship?
There are a number of opportunities to be a clinician and academic in the UK. Watch this film from the MRC to explain more.
From PhD to ECR
As a newly qualified Early Career Researcher, looking ahead to your first year post-PhD, you may be wondering what next. In this case study Georgina Collins, who has a PhD in Translation Studies, talks about her first year as an early career researcher. Georgina Collins I studied for a PhD in Translation Studies in the…
Stranger Careers Advice
By S Donaldson What did you get up to this weekend? I stayed in and binge-watched series 2 of Stranger Things. I know, I know, I’m a little behind. I could pretend the delay was due to my active social life or (more believably) because I had The Defenders and Transparent to get through first….
Explore the skills that can open career doors after your doctoral training
Ph.D. holders in a variety of careers agree that they started developing many of the professional skills they use in their jobs while they were in grad school. The information interpreting, data analysis, and problem solving they did as Ph.D. students were important in research and nonresearch positions alike, a recently published survey of 3803…
In praise of academic spouses
This post is by Moira Hansen who is currently in the 3rd year of her Lord Kelvin Adam Smith-funded PhD at the University of Glasgow. As a graduate of both literary studies and life sciences, her research project – ‘”Melancholy and low spirits are half my disease”: physical and mental health in the life and…
Scientist Focus: Maria Tortora
This is a cross-post from the Alzheimer’s Research UK blog Fighting dementia inspires my research There is more to being an effective dementia researcher than honed laboratory skills. New researchers need to pick up a host of skills in order to forge a successful career and have the greatest impact. This month, dementia researchers in…
Discover the NIHR Faculty and how it can help your career
The National Institute for Health Research Faculty is the collective term for the people we support to lead and deliver health research, and to train as the next generation of health researchers. This is a diverse group of people – including academic researchers, operational delivery professionals and those training as future applied health researchers. The…
Get the picture? How not to use images in the thesis
Thinking of using images in your thesis? Good idea. And easy to do with everything now being digital. But… you have to get it right!
Clinical Academics Career Framework
A new animation from Health Education England and the National Institute for Health Research, explaining opportunities for aspiring clinical academics.
First Submission to Your Supervisor
I’ve always wanted to do my best. To impress. More than that – to be the best. To be infallible. I wanted every one of my submissions to my supervisor to be the same. Perfect. Throughout the first three months of my PhD, I kept trying to write that perfect paper. Those frustrated attempts now…
Alzheimer’s Society, Dementia Research Leaders
Want to be a Dementia Research Leader? Alzheimer’s Society supports researchers who have the skill, drive and potential to be the leading voices and experts in dementia research in the future.
NIHR Research Design Service – Confidential & Free Advice
supporting researchers in developing grant application including, research design, research methods, identifying funding sources and involving patients and the public – Confidential & free
Presentation Tips and Speaking in Public
I suspect speaking in public is a little like Marmite – either you thrive on it and find it a thrilling and stimulating experience, or it scares the living daylights out of you. Possibly both. I first got into public speaking as a teenager who was somewhat socially awkward and gawky, but fond of performing…
Scientist Focus: Grace Hallinan
Postgraduate Research Student in Neuroscience at the University of Southampton (UK), in the final year of her PhD,
NIHR Training and Career Development
NIHR trainees explain how the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has helped them to develop a career in research
Lessons I’ve learnt as an early career researcher
As I come to the end of my current postdoc and tenure as a bona fide early career researcher (at least according to several grant-awarding bodies), I look back on the past 10 years since I started my master’s with wizened eyes. Here are some of the mistakes I have made – from the trivial to the…
Twitter hashtag #ECRDementia
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Dementia patients 'abandoned' by system; then end up in a hospital which, try as it might, is not an appropriate place for a person with #dementia #demphd #ecrdementia BBC News https://t.co/k9juvJm9O0