Our EEHN PhD Lab, led by PG convenor Matthew Lear, have been awarded funding from the Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanites to run an Innovative Training Event in September called PhD Network Training: How to Start and Sustain Successful PGR Networks. The Lab was joined in the application by Ines Kirschner (Aberdeen), Adam Frank (Dundee) and Anne-Sophie Daffertshofer (St Andrews). Professor Dolly Jørgensen (Stavanger), and chair of the Norwegian Researcher School in EnvironmentalHumanities (NoRS-EH) also supported the application and will be part of the trianing event.
Here is the blurb for the event from the application:
Many PhD students try to set up their own postgraduate research networks, however, most find it difficult to sustain interest or participation. The team proposing this training has seen this in each academic year, as numerous PGR networks or reading groups across Scotland start up, struggle, and often disappear.
The doctoral researchers who run the EEHN PhD Lab had no training on how build up and sustain a successful PGR Network. There are many things we wish we would have known or been advised on before we started.
Since starting in 2022, the EEHN PhD Lab has captured numerous grants and organised a range of successful international events. But alongside the external successes, the PhD Lab become a vital peer support network. It has fostered friendships that have carried members through difficult parts of their PhD, creating a space to test ideas, share resources/expertise, and support each other.
By drawing on the experiences of members of the EEHN PhD Lab, other network convenors in and outside the UK, and incorporating our international networks which we have cultivated via online events and shared activities, this training event will provide strategies for SGSAH researchers who want to start and sustain their own successful PGR Networks.
Workshops and training will include: why is a network useful or important; how to run events online and in-person; how to attract other researchers; how to sustain interest; how to win grants for your network.
Outputs from the training event will be communicated to all attendees with a round-up of the workshops, and talks. More general outputs will be communicated through the SGSAH Blog and EEHN and NoRS-EH websites.
Look out for more information in due course. And many congratulations to the Lab!
(Photo by TopoloGiraffe on Unsplash )
Congratulations!!! Brilliant news and well deserved – you have much to share with other Pgrs who’d really benefit from being part of active and successful networks.