In this month’s forum, we had two fantastic guest speakers: Associate Prof. Dave Wong and Dr. Alexa Ruppertsberg.

During the first session, Dave discussed the pros and cons of being a post-doctoral researcher. Post-doctoral researcher positions can be challenging to secure, and it is advisable to seek positions that are at least one year in duration. Post-docs offer more flexibility and typically involve less administrative work than industrial jobs, but they often come with the downside of lower pay. Surprisingly, a 2010 survey revealed that approximately 30% of PhD students entered post-doctoral research positions, while only about 0.45% became professors. Dave also provided some valuable tips and stressed the importance of carefully reading the job descriptions when applying for post-doctoral research positions. Many applications are rejected simply because candidates have not thoroughly reviewed the job adverts. Another option is to apply for a postdoctoral fellowship, which allows you to work on your own research ideas. However, postdoctoral fellowships are not for the faint of heart. They open only once a year, are scarce, require months of preparation, and are highly competitive. Nevertheless, preparing a fellowship application, even if you don’t ultimately receive the fellowship, can be beneficial when applying for a lectureship in the future.

In the second half of the session, Alexa emphasised the importance of research engagement. Writing publications about our research is a common method employed by most PhD students to share their work with others, and this, in itself, constitutes a form of engagement. Additionally, we often present our work at conferences. but there are numerous other ways to engage with others, ranging from maintaining open-access code repositories to conducting interactive school sessions. You can also become involved with the BeCurious team here at the University of Leeds, which encourages the dissemination of research to people of all age groups and promotes STEM subjects to residents of Leeds from diverse backgrounds, while also addressing educational inequality.

This PDF file contains the slides from this September session and includes many links to various ways you can engage people with your research.

Blog written by: Zoe Hancox