Midlands Philosophy Research Training Network

Dr Mark Addis and Prof. Helen Beebee

Faculty of Law, Humanities, Development and Society, Birmingham City University

Start date: August 2008

A regional network to support research ‘training’ and professional development for doctoral students in philosophy. The five participating departments — Birmingham, Birmingham City, Keele, Staffordshire and Warwick — share good practice and resources. The project includes the provision of five day-long workshops per year over two years with each department being responsible for organizing one workshop annually. PhD students from all the participating institutions are encouraged to attend all relevant workshops. The network allows progression from one workshop to the next and facilitates the development of informal support networks.

Aims and Objectives

The programme aims to:

  • Ensure PhD students are aware of what skills and experience they need to acquire during their PhD study in order to stand a good chance of academic employment afterwards, and of how they should present their skills and experience to potential employers.
  • Improve PhD students’ teaching ability and range of competence.
  • Improve PhD students’ research skills e.g. oral presentation of research, preparing papers for publication, writing proposals and applying for research funding.
  • Develop an informal network for PhD students that extends beyond their own institution to students in other regional universities.
  • Provide informal networking opportunities by bringing students into contact with academics outside their own institution.

Final report

Brief summary of the project

The project involves five one-day workshops each year for two years for PhD students in Philosophy at Birmingham, BCU, Warwick, Keele and Staffordshire, focussing on improving awareness of the kinds of skills that are needed in pursuing an academic career, and on inculcating and enhancing those skills. Each of the five participating departments organise one workshop per year, open to all PhD students at the participating institutions. Limited travel subsidies are available to students who attend workshops outside their own institution, and free lunch and refreshments are provided.

Summary of progress so far

The workshops

The workshop programme for 2008-9 was as follows:

  • 12.11.08, Birmingham - Employability for late-stage PhD students
  • 3.12.08, BCU - Teaching 1: Teaching & curriculum design
  • 11.2.09, Warwick - Research 1: Conference presentations, networking, publications advice
  • 11.3.09, Staffs - Employability for early-stage PhD students
  • 6.5.09, Keele - Teaching 2

Website

The project website is at http://blogs.bcu.ac.uk/midlandsphilosophy.

Employment of casual administrative support

A PhD student at BCU (Kirsty Davies) has been hired to help with processing travel claims and the like as well as managing the website.

Workshop feedback

Feedback questionnaires were distributed at 3 of the 5 workshops held in 08-09. Feedback was extremely positive, with no question receiving a score of less than 4.5 out of 5. The URLs of the reports are given below.

Commentary on the current situation

Overall, we have achieved what we set out to achieve by this point, as outlined in our application, and are working within our budget.

There were some teething problems with liaison between the departments, partly due to the current PG Directors at Warwick, Staffs and Keele being different to the ones who originally agreed to be part of the project. However, the issues have all now been resolved, with the organisation of the workshops at these departments in hand, and we now have a complete list of PhD students in the participating departments, along with their research areas and email addresses. This allows workshop organisers to communicate directly with the students.

The workshops held so far were very successful, measured by the feedback received (the URLs for the feedback reports are given above). However, our problem has been the low level of participation of PhD students. It is clear that low turnout is a national problem and not something particular to the Network. This links to wider issues about continuing professional development and whether just supervising a thesis is giving doctoral students enough particularly since many of them will have non-academic careers.

We emailed the students announcing the existence of the Network and explaining what it was for, and advertised the workshops by email several times. Postgraduate directors in the participating departments were asked to encourage students to attend. Despite this fewer than 10 students attended each of the workshops. We hope that as the workshops cycle around the different universities and the message that they are worthwhile spreads amongst students attendance will begin to improve.

Plans for 09-10

Programme of events

The workshop programme for 2009-10 is as follows:

  • 11.11.09, Birmingham - Employability for late-stage PhD students
  • 2.12.09, BCU - Teaching 1: Teaching & curriculum design
  • 10.2.10, Warwick - Research 1: Conference presentations, networking, publications advice
  • 10.3.10, Staffs - Employability for early-stage PhD students
  • 5.5.10, Keele - Teaching 2

Addressing low attendance

A plan of action to address low take up has been formulated and will be implemented in the workshop programme for 2009-2010. The results will be evaluated. The elements of this plan are:

  • Continuing to make use of the online resources arising from the workshops.
  • Students who were positive about the workshops will be asked to put a link from their department and other relevant sites to the project website.
  • Posters with tear off slips for web addresses produced via Microsoft publisher.
  • Assessment of the results of a small questionnaire which will be emailed all PhD students.The questions will include:
    • Have you regularly received invitations to participate in workshops?
    • Are you aware of the website?
    • Do you find the word 'training' off putting?
    • Do you find the workshop titles off putting?
  • Rethinking the presentation of the Network. There seems to be evidence that 'skills' and 'training' have negative connotations for students because many seem to have experienced generic training which they did not find particularly useful. The value of the Network will be articulated in terms of 'academic practice' and 'engagement with philosophy in a broad sense'. Workshop titles will also be rephrased in line with this articulation. Quotes from students who appreciated the workshops will be included.
  • Postgraduate directors will be requested to encourage much greater student involvement in the organisation of the workshops.
  • The costs of participating for students need to be understood. While our PRS funding pays for travel costs and lunch, the workshops take up valuable time and need to be perceived as representing good value. Students may also be concerned about peer perception, how they will be received at the workshop, and the extent to which the workshops might be a distraction from research. These 'costs' need to be offset by a clear explanation of the benefits of the workshops for students, such as networking, engagement with academic experts, discussing professional development in a supportive environment, have sense of belonging to a larger academic community and access to web resources.
  • Putting further effort into building relationships with postgraduate directors in the participating departments and students who were positive about attending the workshops. The aim is to create champions and sustainers of the kind of activities the Network promotes.
  • Investigating funding opportunities for setting up a regional research student colloquium run by students to complement the Network.

Website

The website could be better presented and organised; we shall improve it in time for the start of the 09-10 cycle.

Evaluation

We will try to ensure that all 5 workshops involve the distribution and collection of evaluation reports in 09-10. We will also distribute a general questionnaire to all PhD students at the participating institutions at the end of the 09-10 cycle, in order find out more, particularly about reasons for non-attendance and how the workshops have changed students' attitudes and practices.

Dissemination

We plan to write an article for Discourse, after the 09-10 workshops, describing and evaluating the project and discussing, more generally, the importance of professional development opportunities for philosophy PhD students.