Postdoc Spotlight: Faculty of Education

Please could you give a brief overview of your background and main research interests.

I’m currently a postdoc at the Faculty of Education. I just started my second postdoc in October but before that I was on a short-term contract in the same research group since February. I think that’s the time when I attended the Postdoc Academy training on applying the Canvas framework to plan new research.
 

Have you explored what PdA offers?

I got added to a mailing list when I started, and I was receiving the newsletter. I kept my eye on some of the training opportunities and at the time, one of the things I was asked to do was to work on a grant proposal for my PI. 

So, those were the sorts of things I looked at. I was also trying to write grant proposals for my own projects, so most of the things I attended were around grant writing or finding funders and those sorts of things. That’s why I attended the training on using Research Canvas, and since then I attended the Welcome Event about 9 months after I’d initially started. That gave me a bigger overview of some of the other things I didn’t know about, like some of the options for hot-desking.

Then I kept an eye on the Postdoc Academy newsletters for some of the training events.

There’s a lot that seems really relevant and it’s a matter of leaning towards the ones that are more immediately relevant to what I’m trying to do. I used the Writing Retreats when I was trying to get a paper out, and it helped me get the work done. I think there’s a lot on offer and sometimes it’s about being judicious about which ones I go to because there’s so much training that you could spend time on.
 

So, you feel like you’ve tried the more relevant sounding training, and that there’s some on the periphery that you haven’t explored yet?

Yeah, I have my eyes on some things that may be useful later because I know some of them repeat. So, if I miss out this time, maybe next time around it’ll be more relevant to what I’m doing.
 

What made you decide to take part in entrepreneurial skills training?

It wasn’t so much the entrepreneurial side of things because I’m not planning on being an entrepreneur at the moment. It was the grant proposal writing aspect of it that was relevant at the time and useful in general for me to build those skills and to understand how to write a good grant proposal. I suppose there are similarities and that’s why the University has introduced this Research Canvas tool as a way of thinking about research projects in a more business-like manner.
 

Did you have an idea for how you would use the skills from the training, or was it more to see where it would lead?

The reason Katia Smith-Litière, (Development Consultant (Entrepreneurial skills) at PdA), who delivers the session, suggested this interview is because at the Welcome Event I had a chat with her about it [research canvas], and I mentioned that I used it with my PI to write the grant proposal.

So, I think it was just as a way of framing our thinking. We were at a stage with the grant proposal where there were lots of ideas floating around, but it really helped to focus our attention on what we were doing, why we were doing it, what it would take to do it. It was helpful in that sense in terms of focusing our thinking and providing a framework for writing things down, and I think that’s applicable to all sorts of things. In grant writing in general though, which is quite important in academia, it felt like a really useful tool.
 

What were your key takeaways from the training, as you say it was kind of that funnelling aspect, I suppose, providing focus?

It also guided our thinking through all the different elements because some of them we had probably thought about but not necessarily in those terms.

The templates were really good for guiding you through the thinking process and there are definitely elements where it generated discussion and allowed us to articulate things. I think it was a good framework for articulation.
 

Have you recommended the training sessions to others?

I did. When I first attended, I shared it with my research group. I thought it was really useful because grant writing is one of those things that’s a little bit nebulous and, as a UK researcher, you don’t necessarily have a lot of experience with it. It’s nice to have something to get you started in the process.

I think there’s also lots of other things in the Postdoc Academy that are really relevant, and people don’t necessarily know about it or these resources. And it’s the same thing with the Careers Service. I think we’re really lucky at Cambridge to have all of this support. I tried to write a grant application with another university, and I found it was lacking serious support. I feel we’re very lucky that there’s all this support for early career researchers and I’ve been spreading the word about it.
 

Is there anything else you would like to highlight?

I think the variety of support has been very helpful. The fact that things get repeated and it’s not just variety in terms of the topics, but also in terms of the kinds of support. I had my eye on this teaching fellowship, for example, to really help build your profile for the next stage of your career. I think that’s really good that it’s not just about helping you do the job, but about building your career in general. I think that’s very useful.