Roberts Researcher Development Fund

PhD poster day in the Industrial Relations Department The Teaching and Learning Centre has some funding available to support student- or staff-led initiatives in the area of professional development for early-career researchers (PhD students and postdocs).

'Roberts' funds are allocated to UK universities from the Research Councils to support the transferable skills training and career development needs of PhD students and post-doctoral (or early-career) researchers. At LSE, these funds are used to run the central professional development programmes for these groups, but a proportion of the money is reserved to support relevant projects suggested by groups of researchers, departments or research centres.

Projects seeking support from this fund should have a clear training or development aim focusing on one or more of the following areas: research management; communication skills; networking and teamworking; and career management and development. The main beneficiaries must be research students or research staff. For more guidelines and to make an application please download the application form (Word document). Please note that this fund is not able to support individuals' attendance at external training events or conferences.

Examples of projects funded under this scheme to date include:

a day-long 'Research Bites' event in the Institute for Social Psychology including research speed-dating between PhD students and academic staff and facilitated sessions on enhancing the research community in the Institute;
a PhD poster day in the Industrial Relations Department (now EROB group) at which students presented their work in poster format and received feedback from each other and academic staff;
an away day for PhD students in the Gender Institute focusing on sharing experiences of communicating about research;
a weekend workshop in Cambridge for PhD students in International History (organised in collaboration with Cambridge students) focusing on discussing elements of the PhD experience and how to get work published; and
a mentoring scheme amongst PhD students in the Institute for Social Psychology which has now been rolled out to other departments.

If you would like to discuss initial ideas before applying for funds please contact Dr Gita Subrahmanyam (g.subrahmanyam@lse.ac.uk, 020 7955 6079).