Congratulations, once again to our winners of this year’s Graduate and Researcher College Prizes! The GRC prizes were created for our postgraduates and postgraduate staff members to spotlight the fantastic work that both groups undertake each year.

To celebrate our GRC Prize winners, we treated them to a ‘Winners Afternoon Tea’ hosted by Professor Paul Allain and Dr Tim Hopthrow. Meeting at the historic Falstaff Hotel in Canterbury, we certainly celebrated the success of our winners in style!

It was fantastic to see our GRC Prize Winners – thank you for joining us and for all your excellent work. We look forward to reopening the GRC Prizes next year, and to receiving your nominations.

Are you a Postdoctoral Research Associate (PDRA), Research Assistant (RA) or Research Associate interested in developing your project and people management skills? Did you know you can apply to run your own independent project and win funding worth up to £2500 to work with an undergraduate intern for 4-7 weeks on your research?

The Summer Vacation Research Competition will run for the fifth time in 2022 with funding available for 9 different summer vacation research projects, each of which could be associated with a particular Division and/or Signature Research Theme.

The competition models grant writing and application processes, allowing you to design an independent research project, gain a mentor, receive training and be involved with shortlisting, interviewing and managing a RA, project and budget.

Feedback from postdoc participants is extremely positive with one commenting: “This experience has been invaluable and has made a massive contribution to my development as an early career researcher. I feel more confident in writing funding applications, recruitment, supervision, and leading research independently.” Learn more about the competition and hear from other winners by viewing the recording of our recent ‘Valuing, supporting and developing our postdocs’ event – please access the link via SharePoint (Kent staff login required) and scroll down – the SVRC element begins at 00:25.

Reflecting on the benefits of participation, Dr Jennifer Leigh, the event’s co-founder with Dr Helen Leech, said:

“The positive impact on successful applicants is self-evident and can include increased productivity and outputs, non-research skills acquisition and kick-started career planning. One PDRA told us “I got more work done on this project in 6 weeks than I would have done in a year of working in my own time” and many others have credited the competition with the opportunity, practice and support to make successful applications for funding and fellowships, and to apply for permanent roles.”

Details of how to apply, including the application form, are available via SharePoint (Kent staff login required). The closing date for applications is 11 February 2022.

An informal virtual Q&A session about the competition will take place on 03 February, 2022 from 1-2pm (further details in this blogpost) or please email svrc@kent.ac.uk with any queries in the meantime.

Good luck with your application!

On Wednesday 1 December the Graduate and Researcher College (GRC) and the Postgraduate Network invited students to a postgraduate coffee morning. Meeting in the Woolf College Common Room, postgraduates networked with their peers, mingled with the GRC team and our PG Network representatives whilst enjoying a warm drink and some cake! 

Thank you to all who attended and helped organise this fantastic event! It was excellent to catch up with (and meet!) so many of our postgraduate students. It was also great to hear all about what they are up to, and their experiences here at the University of Kent and on the Canterbury campus.

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All future events will also be sent to your university mailboxes – so please keep an eye out.

We look forward to seeing you all again soon!