Researcher-led Initiative awards
Researcher-led initiative awards
Applications are open for our Online Researcher-Led Initiatives Funding Award Scheme.
The Researcher Development and Research Culture team has an annual fund to support the development and cascading of personal, professional and career management skills by and for postgraduate research students and early career research staff across the University of Exeter. These Researcher-led Initiative awards are intended to enable postgraduate research students and early career research staff to be creative, proactive, and empowered, through the process of initiating, designing, managing, and delivering new professional development activities for their peers that will develop the skills and experience needed to progress their careers.
This year, we are asking for applications for online/virtual events on the following themes:
- Developing an engaged research culture
- Building a PGR or ECR community
- Equality, diversity, and inclusivity
- Wellbeing
Funding is available for applications of a maximum of up to £1000 per award to pay for external facilitators/speakers to support projects, events, and initiatives on these themes. We encourage lower cost initiatives, to enable us to fund as many projects as possible over the course of your scheme.
As part of your application, you are asked to demonstrate the following:
- cross-College/interdisciplinary demand for and interest in your project
- lasting impact of your initative
- collaborative applications are encouraged
We will be running a rolling scheme that will stay open until 19 May 2021, assessing applications monthly on a case-by-case basis. This will enable us to be flexible, and responsive to the current situation.
Please note: all initiatives need to be complete by the end of the financial year (31st July 2021).
You can apply using our online application form.
Deadlines for each month are as follows:-
- Wed 17 February 2021
- Wed 24 March 2021
- Wed 21 April 2021
- Wed 19 May 2021
If you have any questions or would like to discuss an idea for an application, please contact researcherdevelopment@exeter.ac.uk.
Exclamat!on
A new postgraduate journal supported by the University of Exeter’s College of Humanities and Doctoral College’s Researcher Development team.
Our decision to start a new peer-review journal for Postgraduate Research and Taught students in the disciplines of English, Creative Writing and Film at the University of Exeter. We named it Exclamat!on: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and set no thematic constraints for the first issue, so as to appeal to the widest range of contributors possible. Our initial mission for the journal was simple. We sought to create an innovative space in which PGRs and PGTs could engage in current debates and interdisciplinary discussions; we wanted to bring together divergent and creative ideas, and fundamentally showcase work via a new publishing platform within the Department of English. We have recently published the second volume of Exclamat!on, which successfully builds on the success of the first volume. Read our blog to find out more.
Institute of Health Research focus days 2017 & 2018
Words of wisdom were thrown out like sweeties to attendees at the Institute of Health Research Early Career Researcher Network’s recent Focus Day. The theme being “Things the University is Doing that you Don’t Know About, that you Might Want to Know About, that Might Help you Progress your Career. Plus Helpful Career (and Life) Advice from People who’ve Been Where you are and Survived”. Or something like that.
On arrival to the Focus Day, attendees were given a copy of “Self-care for academics: a poetic invitation to reflect and resist” by Siobhan O’Dwyer, Sarah Pinto and Sharon McDonough. After a gentle start to the day, with colouring and refreshments, the thirty-five attendees were inundated with useful advice on a range of career-related topics, including: The Exeter Academic and how it relates to progression and promotion, the University of Exeter Doctoral College and how it supports development for early career researchers, the purpose and achievements of the Positive Working Environment Board and how to get the most out of mentoring and other one-to-one career support.
But equally valuable was the insight into the somewhat stochastic and unexpected career paths of those who have, somehow, navigated the world of the early career researcher and made it to the heady heights of mid-career researcher or even senior academic.
For more details of the Focus Day and the Institute of Health Research Early Career Researcher Network, see our blog post.
Machine Learning
Recent technological advances, such as high-throughput sequencing and remote sensing, provide life scientists with large and complex data sets. This data require several layers of computational processing, from data cleaning and preparation to employing rigorous statistical modelling and machine learning.
Typically, such analyses cannot be performed using off-the-shelf software. Instead scientists need to write custom code to create and automate their data analytical pipelines.
Python is a scripted high-level programming language that is arguably becoming the de facto standard for exploratory and interactive scientific research. The “swiss army knife” for researchers, Python is an easy-to-learn and versatile language that can be used to perform a wide variety of tasks: numerical computations, statistical analysis, data visualisation, image processing, video analysis and more. Moreover, Python is open-source and cross-platform, making software projects easy to disseminate and reproduce, without the need for expensive licences.
We are organising a series of workshops that introduce life scientists to Python. We will present the core aspects of the language and draw examples from a variety of life science applications to show how biological data can be analysed using simple scripts.
All the supporting workshop material has been publicly uploaded onto GitHub., for more details please contact j.j.valletta@exeter.ac.uk
The Academic Woman
‘The Academic Woman’ is a global network for all women in higher education and has been instrumental in bringing women together across the whole of the university with our ‘Inspiring Women’ seminar series which ran during last term from March – June 2018. We held 6 sessions which were lunchtime sessions with refreshments from 12-1pm starting with the newly appointed Head of Department for Management, Prof Alex Gerbasi and finishing with a talk from Dr Sawsan Khuri, Associate from the Medical School. All of the seminars were well attended and created lively discussions around issues affected women in academia in both their personal and professional lives. Attendees came from varied disciplines and included senior management and UG students.
Events were promoted via social media where we now have nearly 2000 followers, through our Facebook page and LinkedIn site. For more details, see our webpage.
Winners of 2019 funding round
We are delighted to announce that in 2019 there were 35 high quality applications made to the Researcher-led initiative awards, with 21 of exceptional quality being successfully funded. Thanks to all of those who applied for an award and congratulations to our new award holders.
Lead Applicant | Campus | College | Initiative |
Alison Norton | Streatham | Humanities | Collaborative Archaeology and Humanities Training |
Ann Power | Streatham | Life and Environmental Sciences | ‘The ImageStream Revolution!’ A novel solution to answering complex environmental questions. |
Antonella Florio | Streatham | Humanities | ‘ExeWip’ (Exeter Works in Progress) - Exeter Classics Postgraduate Seminars |
Camille Poignard | Streatham | Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences | Organisation of a workshop on ‘Networks approaches for Healthcare applications’ |
Diana Valencia Duarte | Streatham | Humanities | 'The Avocado Dialogues': Developing research skills for participatory methodologies |
Emily Taylor | Truro | Medicine and Health | Community Based Journal Club |
Isabel Sawkins | Streatham | Humanities | ‘Beliefs, Identity, and Ideas’ |
Jaime Peters | St Luke’s | Medicine and Health | Improving understanding of the development and evaluation of medical tests |
Jennifer Finlay | Streatham | Life and Environmental Sciences | Kegs of Knowledge |
Joanne Morten | Streatham | Life and Environmental Sciences | 17th Marine Biological Association Conference |
Katherine Strick | Truro | Medicine and Health | Developing creative content for social media to support career advancement |
Katie Orchel | Penryn | Life and Environmental Sciences | Science Communication Workshops for ECRs - from Ivory Tower to Public Sphere - how to take your research out of the Academy and to the masses. |
Kirsten J Lees | Streatham | Life and Environmental Sciences | Where to start with Impact and Engagement |
Max Barnish | St Luke’s | Medicine and Health | The Evidence Synthesis and Modelling for Health Improvement (ESMI) Guest Lecture Series 2020 |
Owen Tomlinson | St Luke’s | Life and Environmental Sciences | ‘InHaLE’ (Interdisciplinary Heart and Lung ECR) Seminar Series |
Paulina Sepulveda and Javiera Salazar Rivera | St Luke’s | Social Sciences and International Studies | Being here, researching there: First Colloquium of International Postgraduate Educational Researchers |
Penelope Maher | Streatham | Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences | Understanding body language (hosted by Women in Physics and Women in Climate) |
Shalinee Dhayal | St Luke’s | Medicine and Health | ‘Don’t lose the plot! Learn to Western Blot’ (Western blotting workshop) |
Svetlana Yefimenko | Streatham | Humanities | Empire and Literature Roundtable |
Tanya Pennell | Penryn | Life and Environmental Sciences | RISE: Research & Inclusivity in Social Evolution |
Viktor Kouloumpis | Penryn | Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences | Carbon Literacy Training |
Winners of the 2018 funding
We are delighted to announce that in 2018 there were 41 applications made to the Researcher-led initiative awards, with 20 being successfully funded. Thanks to all of those who applied for an award and congratulations to our new award holders.
Lead award holder | Title of their Researcher-led Initiative | Discipline |
The Business School | ||
Gemma Delafield | ExeterEnergy Seminar Series | Economics |
College of Engineering Mathematics and Physical Sciences | ||
Tinkle Chugh | Workshop on Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) | Mathematics |
Charlie Kirkwood | How to share your code: an introduction to the Git ecosystem for early career researchers | Mathematics |
Bob-Dan Lechner | Negative results: not junk, but an opportunity to learn | Physics |
Penelope Maher | Careers in Climate (hosted by Women in Climate) | Mathematics |
College of Humanities | ||
Lisa Berry-Waite | Conceptualising statehood in the age of Brexit | History |
Ashley Gannicott | Borders, Boundaries and Margins - Exclamat!on: An Interdisciplinary Journal's Annual Conference 2019 | English |
Veronica Heney and Zaina Mahmoud | Sensitive Interview Training | Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health |
Adrián Oyaneder Rodríguez | First South American Meeting at Exeter (SAAME) | Archaeology |
Jessica Tyner-Mehta | An Introduction to SEO for Researchers and Creatives | English |
College of Life and Environmental Sciences | ||
Hazel Knipe | Postgraduate Mental Health Workshop | Biosciences |
Benjamin Sherlock | Version Control Systems | Living Systems Institute |
College of Medicine and Health | ||
Ben Lee | Gene Expression and Synthetic Biology Symposium | Medicine |
Daisy Parker | Doing Quality Qualitative Analysis | Medicine |
Liz Shaw | Creative Communications: has your research gone far enough? | Medicine |
Tristan Snowsill | Linking with discipline specific cross-university early career researcher networks | Medicine |
Joana Viana | Reproducible and Open Science Workshop | Medicine |
Sarah Walker | ExeCTU: A Focus on Statistics in Regulated Clinical Trials | Medicine |
College of Social Sciences and International Studies | ||
Jingya (Elaine) Liu | Creative Interviews in the Social Science | Education |
Virginia Thomas | The Academic Woman | Politics and International Relations |
We are also pleased that we are able to financially support some aspects of the following initiatives:
Lead award holder | Title of their Initiative | Discipline |
College of Engineering Mathematics and Physical Sciences | ||
Oluwanfunmilola Ola | International Women in Engineering Day 2019 | Engineering |
College of Humanities | ||
Matt Beebee | The Humanities Postgraduate Research Conference 2019 | History |
College of Medicine and Health | ||
Ruth Gwernan-Jones | St Luke’s Volunteer Garden | Medicine |