Learning and development support
Vitae offers tailored professional and career development programmes for researchers.
We work with institutions to understand and support the needs of your researchers and co-design programmes to centre peer learning and ensure relevance and impact.
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Supporting institutions, supporting researchers
We can offer support with:
- Development needs analysis
- Online and in person training and workshops
- Individual and group coaching and mentoring
- Adaptation of the Researcher Development Framework for your institution/context
- Train the trainer to support sustainability of your programme
- Evaluation of researcher development programmes
Our support
Our extensive expertise in designing and delivering programmes for researchers across all disciplines, combined with our context-sensitive knowledge and understanding of researchers’ needs and challenges, makes us an ideal learning and development partner.
Is evidence-led and researcher-centered
Our learning and development offering is experiential, with evidence led development and a researcher centred, collaborative, approach at the heart of everything we do.
Where possible, we aim to co-design programmes with researchers to centre their experience, and tailor programmes to meet their needs and challenges; whilst also using our knowledge and understanding to offer practical and impactful learning and development solutions.
Is for all career stages and disciplines
Our learning and development programmes are tailored for researchers at all career stages, from those in the first year of their doctorates to experienced researchers in leadership role. We provide practical training that researchers can apply to their professional lives, whatever their career stage and discipline.
Is underpinned by the Vitae Researcher Development Framework
Vitae programmes are underpinned by the Vitae Researcher Development Framework (RDF) which maps the full range of knowledge, behaviours and competencies identified as attributes of successful researchers. Learning outcomes for all of our courses are fully mapped to the RDF.
Working with us
We partner with professionals supporting researchers within institutions, and on full understanding of your requirements will:
- Secure an expert facilitator/coach with the knowledge and experience to work with your researchers
- Share all joining information and programmes, written for your researchers, with everything they need to engage in activities
- Map the content of our activity to the Researcher Development Framework
- Provide post activity online evaluation as standard, with an option for enhanced evaluation
- Provide an additional host for online delivery to support researcher’ interaction and engagement
“Really informative and illuminating. I feel much more confident starting out in my research now.”
Workshop participant – February 2024
“The workshops combined theory with highly practical tools, and displayed great pedagogical acumen. The facilitator was unfailingly positive and solution-minded every step of the way. Fantastic, just fantastic.”
Workshop participant – February 2023
“Excellent interactions with the coach, positive, professional and constructive. She is listening, understanding, and well prepared, providing ideas/orientations and conceptual material to think about and progress.”
1-1 coaching participant, 2022
“The session was firmly grounded in expertise and theory, but allowed opportunities to network and present – things you can't do through individual study alone.”
Workshop participant – October 2022
“This was a fantastic workshop, facilitated very well. I will recommend to colleagues, and feel confident in applying my learning in my future work!”
Workshop participant – April 2022
“Very useful for understanding the importance and getting the tools to set a clear career strategy (which is an aspect I was not giving much importance before).”
Polonez Fellow – Management Training Session
Areas of expertise
We offer online or in-person training, mentoring and coaching, and ‘Train the Trainer’ support across the Researcher Development Framework, as listed below. We also design Development Needs Analysis to underpin your programme, and enhance evaluation to evidence impact.
- Career and professional development: Professional and career development planning; Career choices for researchers; Making effective job applications; Preparing for job interviews; Introduction to the Researcher Development Framework (RDF) and Planner.
- Professional effectiveness: How to be an effective researcher; Enhancing professional effectiveness; Time management in research; Project management in research; Strategic project management; Work-life balance.
- Research leadership: Effective leadership; Building and managing a research team; Creating a healthy research culture; Leading your vision and implementing strategy; Setting the research agenda; Effective mentoring relationships.
- Responsible research and integrity: The open researcher; The green researcher; finding and applying for grant funding; Resposible research and integrity.
- Commercialising research: Enterprising researcher; Intellectual property rights for researchers; Developing your research pitch.
- Engagement and impact: Research communication and impact; Engaging with policymakers; Communicating research to industry; Publication and peer review.
- Communication and collaboration: Collaborative researcher; Building an online profile; Networking strategies; Building positive supervision relationships.
- ‘Train the trainer’ sessions: Tailored for researcher developers, providing you with a grounding in the principles and techniques of effective researcher development and supporting you to deliver in-house programmes.
- Coaching: Online and group coaching with qualified coaches to support researchers in their career development or other specific needs.
Vitae members and non members
Vitae membership offers a host of benefits to institutions and their researchers. Member institutions automatically receive a 10% discount on all training delivered by Vitae, as well as access to our off-the-shelf training resources for in-house delivery.
Vitae membership is open to universities and higher education institutions around the world.
However, our learning and development programmes are also available to non-member institutions. Contact learning.development@vitae.ac.uk to find out more.
Vitae Associate trainer network
We work closely with our Associates in the design and delivery of our programs. Vitae Associates are expert trainers and facilitators with a wide variety of specialist knowledge and experience of working in research, industry and higher education.
Working with associates allows us to draw upon a deep and broad pool of skills and expertise to tailor support for our clients, institutions, and researchers. Contact learning.development@vitae.ac.uk to find out more.
Learning and development case studies
Vitae specialises in the delivery of researcher development. We can provide support from addressing gaps in your training programme to designing and delivering large-scale, multi-format learning and development programmes.
Click on the content below to learn more about our work supporting partners, institutions and researchers:
We are delighted to be working with The British Academy to provide a programme of support for the professional and career development of Researchers at Risk fellows. The fellowship programme is funded by the UK government and supported by the UK National Academies with the Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA). Further information on the fellowships can be found at: Researchers at Risk Fellowships | The British Academy.
The programme has been designed to support 180 Researchers at Risk Fellows at over 70 UK-based institutions and help them to navigate the challenges of integrating into UK academic life and plan for their future and diverse career paths.
The data from our initial development needs analysis has provided an understanding of the fellows’ training and development needs, their levels of confidence and areas of interest. These findings together with the input and insight from the fellows themselves through our Researchers at Risk Learning and Development committee (formed of fifteen fellows who are working with us to co-create the programme), is informing our researcher centred approach to ensure a relevant, impactful, and coherent programme.
The programme commenced with a two-day in person ‘Career development within and beyond academia’ workshop this month for cohort groups based on disciplines. Additional activities include networking events and ‘career support conversations’ that use an Action Learning Set ethos to encourage peer networking and provide fellows with further clarity around their future career directions and important peer support. Further professional development workshops such as grant funding, project management, open research, wellbeing and mental health, and leadership and management of others, are being developed and delivered for fellows.
A dedicated microsite and LinkedIn group brings together all resources and materials shared through our programme, and a space for fellows to collaborate online. An evaluation will be undertaken on completion of the programme in 2025 to evidence impact.
Vitae are excited to be contributing to the doctoral component of the expanding Cal-Bridge program.
The Cal-Bridge programme is a partnership between 9 University of California (UC), 22 California State University (CSU), and the 116 community college campuses in California, with over 200 faculty from the three systems participating. Scholars are recruited from CSU and community college campuses across the state, with the help of local faculty and/or staff liaisons at each campus.
Cal-Bridge creates opportunities for members of historically underrepresented groups, including women, underrepresented minorities, members of the LGBTQ+ community, those with disabilities, and first-generation students, to participate and advance in STEM fields including physics, astronomy, computer science/engineering, and mathematics, to increase their numbers in PhD programs in California, USA.
Vitae’s work with Cal-Bridge will involve the development of research leadership capabilities through targeted workshops and structured activities, as well as providing support to Cal-Bridge as they begin to develop the professional development program for doctoral students. Through our programme, we are working with Cal-Bridge to provide several important factors:
- Development Needs Analysis, based upon the Vitae Researcher Development Framework (RDF);
- Access to the RDF Planner for participating scholars. The RDF planner is an online tool that supports researchers in using the Vitae RDF. Researchers use the RDF to assess their leadership capabilities, identify areas for development, and create an action plan.
- Formal membership of Vitae for all scholars;
- A programme of workshops designed to support doctoral scholars as they commence and progress their doctoral programmes;.
- Embedded evaluation of the efficacy of our Cal-Bridge professional development programme.
Vitae were pleased to work with Leeds Beckett University between 2022-2023 to develop and deliver a programme for early career and experienced researchers, focusing on how Vitae’s Researcher Development Framework (RDF) can enable researchers to be more empowered in their research and their professional lives.
The programme commenced with a Development Needs analysis, underpinned by the RDF, to understand researchers’ confidence levels across a range of areas and their priorities for development. On analysis of findings a programme of 10 workshops were developed and delivered between
October 2022 and March 2023, on the following themes:
- Effective researcher
- Communication and collaboration
- Setting the research agenda
- Project management
- Responsible research and ethics
- Strategic project management
- Writing grant applications
- Engaging with policymakers
- Generating impact via engagement
- Enterprising researcher
Initial feedback highlighted that 92 % of researchers responding rated the workshops as excellent or good. 96% of respondents rated our facilitator’s expertise and skills as excellent or good. Researchers’ commented:
- ‘I am now more confident to show up to policy makers’
- ‘I definitely had time to reflect and think about the grant writing process’
- ‘I got so much more out of it than my original objectives’
- ‘Set me up for meeting a client group the following day’
- ‘The session was firmly grounded in expertise and theory, but allowed opportunities to network and present – things you can’t do through individual study alone’
In many areas where pre-programme confidence levels were low or lacking, these had increased to 75-100% of respondents feeling, post-workshops, that they had a good level of confidence.
Vitae’s specifically designed programmes are made to get the best from researchers and boost their confidence.
In this post, Novo Ejokpa, postgraduate student at the University of Essex, shares her experience of a recent Vitae student placement. The University of Essex Transitions and Transformations project has a dedicated sponsorship element to develop the research and professional skills, network, knowledge and opportunities for aspiring Black researchers, encouraging and enabling informed career choices within and beyond academia. The project funds student placements with various industry partners, including Vitae.
In contributing to the Essex Transitions and Transformations project, my placement involved supporting aspiring Black researchers through developing targeted learning and development resources to aid the transition of Black postgraduate taught students to postgraduate research.
I facilitated networking with Black researchers at the University of Essex to understand the challenges they encounter in making this transition and provided feedback on the effectiveness of resources on the Black Researchers Hub. In this placement I was able to apply my ideas and skills, to address the challenges and opportunities experienced by aspiring Black researchers in their transition to postgraduate research. With knowledge of the multiple career options that come with the skills acquired in postgraduate research and the institutional support available at the University of Essex, I am reassured that if I choose to undertake postgraduate research there is adequate support and resources that I can rely on in my journey.
The University of Essex project, ‘Transitions and Transformations: Black Researcher’s Journey’, is a pioneering project aimed at breaking down barriers and supporting the next generation of Black Researchers. The Essex Project is part of 13 projects across England funded by Research England, UKRI, and the Office for Students to tackle persistent inequalities that create barriers for Black, Asian and minority ethnic students to access postgraduate research.
According to the UKRI’s 2021 – 2022 diversity report just 5% of UKRI-funded studentships went to Black students. Higher Education Statistic Agency (HESA) figures for 2021/2022 also indicated that just 165 professors, out of over 23,000, declared their ethnicity as Black. Although the latest HESA 2022/2023 statistics for staff in higher education showed an increase of 25% in the number of Black professors, they still represent only 1% of all professors in the UK. While the data highlights an improvement in the representation of Black researchers in higher education, it also indicates a need to build on this momentum to ensure better representation.
One of the ways the University of Essex project approaches this need is through the Essex Transitions and Transformation (Essex TandT) framework developed in partnership with Vitae and Essex students, and based on the Vitae Researcher Development Framework (RDF). Although based on the RDF, the Essex TandT framework is unique as it also provides for undergraduate and postgraduate taught phase as additional stages for the development of the skills of aspiring Black researchers. The skills assessment and enhancement provided via the Essex TandT framework enables undergraduate and postgraduate taught students to identify existing skills and skills for further development to aid their transition to postgraduate research.
One of the transformative initiatives of the Essex project, the Black Researchers Hub, provides both an online and in person networking platform to support and facilitate the articulation, dissemination and sharing of ideas among Black researchers. Recognising the importance of representation in fostering a sense of belonging, building community and providing a career anchor for the aspirations of Black researchers, the hub promotes networking between students across all stages of higher education to share insights, collaborate, and inspire the next generation of Black researchers.
The Vitae training programme for POLONEZ consists of 29 two-day workshops on five different themes for over 100 fellows held over a two year period for research fellows funded by POLONEZ, a funding scheme run by the National Science Centre, Poland.
Underpinned by the RDF, the themes of the Vitae programme include Personal Effectiveness, Working with Others, Management, Communication and Intellectual Property and Commercialisation.
The sessions are delivered by a range of Vitae expert trainers to ensure the best possible match between their experience and the POLONEZ training requirements.
Vitae are also facilitating networking events for the POLONEZ fellows, including talks on research-industry collaboration and a networking opportunity for Polonez fellows and fellows from other programmes to meet those involved in R&D and start-ups beyond academia.