Skills Training
Queen Mary is passionate about ensuring that we prepare all of our research students for the world beyond their PGR degree, whether their career leads inside or outside academia.
We take your professional development very seriously and will give you opportunities to develop new knowledge as well as recognising the skills you already have.
Doing a doctorate is about more than writing your thesis – you need a wide range of skills to undertake, analyse, and communicate research effectively.
Just as importantly, these skills help you develop as a researcher. The skills you develop during your doctorate – whether they are directly related to your field, are ‘soft’ skills, or are personal development skills – will be useful in your life and career beyond your doctorate
All Doctoral College training is underpinned by our Training and Development Pillars, which focus on 6 different skills areas:
- Doctoral essentials
- Thriving as a researcher
- Ethics and Integrity
- Careers
- Engagement and Impact
- Research culture
- Commercialisation, IP, and Enterprise
It’s important to remember that everyone will have different skills already in place and different skills development needs. You don’t need to be developing skills in each pillar at the same speed or at the same time.
Take some time to reflect on the skills you already have and talk to your supervisors about what skills you should be developing at particular points during your doctorate.
The Doctoral College has a PGR Development Needs Analysis (DNA) to help you identify the skills you have, the skills you want to develop, and to set goals for your development. Work with your supervisors to determine what skills you need to develop, when, and the best training opportunities for you to meet your goals.
Skills training is available in several forms at Queen Mary:, most notably through both internal and external training providers and subject specific training workshops run by your academic school or institute.
- In-person and online training and development events run by the Doctoral College and our partners.
- You can view our semester calendar of training to find and book onto these opportunities.
- You can also find other opportunities on the CPD Training System.
- Online, self-study materials and resources.
- Subject-specific training run by your academic School or Institute.