Who writes this blog?

A team of higher education academics, academic developers, psychologists and philosophers with years of experience in designing and delivering doctoral education and researcher development activities. We, and our guests write about the ‘hidden curriculum’ of doctoral education and our blog aims to support anyone who wants to enable researchers to access and utilise the learning …

Call for contributions to the blog: developing organisational change for diversity, equity, and institutional democracy through the Hidden Curriculum

Our next collective initiative brings together stories of how doctoral researchers, supervisors, developers, and institutional leaders initiate and carry out organisational change in their universities, doctoral programmes, research teams, informal academic networks, and otherwise, through their learning from the Hidden Curriculum. The series of blog posts will bring together examples and analyses of such learning …

PhD Student ‘Peer Support Group’: More Than You Think

This post is by Qian Jiang (@QJiang09) and Jingwen Zhou (@real_zjw) who are both first year doctoral researchers in the School of Education at the University of Glasgow. (Two people in a meeting. Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash) This blog aims to share our experience of organising peer support group (although in our case, …

Five steps to healthy research career building

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Gadd is the Head of Research Operations at the University of Glasgow and a Research Policy Manager at Loughborough University. She leads the International Network of Research Management Societies (INORMS) Research Evaluation Group, the Association of Research Managers & Administrators (ARMA) Research Evaluation SIG, and the LIS-Bibliometrics Forum. Lizzie’s previous writing highlights four …

Festive Five!

A happy and warm festive season to you, from your blog editors Kay Guccione, Dely Elliot, and Søren Bengtsen. Here below are our Festive Five, the top 5 most highly read posts from 2021. Finding ways to maintain our learning communities, by Prof. Gina Wisker, University of Bath.The Hidden Curriculum of Researcher Development, by Dr Stephanie Zihms …

No hard feelings? The hidden curriculum of emotions in doctoral education

Amanda (Mindy) Ptolomey is an early career researcher who devises creative and inclusive modes of inquiry to work alongside marginalised people and is based across Sociology and Education at the University of Glasgow. Alongside academia, Mindy has been a community development leader in Scotland and internationally for over a decade. Mindy is Co-PI on the …

PGR Walk and Talk – building learning communities in a spirit of interconnectedness, conviviality and collegiality

Dr Hyab Yohannes has recently completed his doctorate at in the School of Education and is currently a Graduate Teaching Assistant. Weijun Liang is a doctoral candidate and Graduate Teaching Assistant in the School of Education. Both authors are based at the University of Glasgow. The Walk and Talk group ‘Walk and Talk’ is a postgraduate researcher …

Building a research network while not being part of a research group: post-PhD reflections

Melina Aarnikoivu is a postdoctoral researcher in the Higher Education Studies team (HIEST) at the Finnish Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Recently, she won a 1-year full-time research grant from the Wihuri foundation to study academic writing practices of early-career researchers in Finland, which means she now has one less unfunded project …

Could ‘thinking out loud’ be an inherent pedagogical strategy for scholarly writing?

This post is by Dr Dely Elliot, Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow and member of the Hidden Curriculum in Doctoral Education blog team. To use the dictation function in word, go to the ‘Edit’ menu, and choose ‘Start Word Dictation’ I always find blog writing a relaxing activity. It may come as a …

The hidden meanings of independent research(er)

By Dr Owen Gower, Director of the UK Council for Graduate Education. The UK Council for Graduate Education recently published the findings of the UK Research Supervision Survey, and Owen has co-authored a WonkHE blog post with Dr Karen Clegg (Head of the Research Excellence Training Team at the University of York) summarising the findings. …

Building your support tribe

Jon Rainford (@jonrainford) completed his part time PhD at Staffordshire University in 2019. His thesis explored widening participation policy and practices in higher education. Alongside Kay Guccione, he manages the Thriving Part Time blog and is co-authoring a book to support part-time doctoral researchers with Kay Guccione due out in 2022 with Routledge. Photo by …