DCU Researcher Development Guide

Getting to know DCU is the first step in your professional journey at the university. DCU People have some clear advice and supports to help you begin your journey. DCU Learning and Organisational Development offer a Digital Orientation coupled with an Orientation day to help you better understand the university and to meet colleagues from across the organisation. 

Learning and Organisational Development provide a broad range of courses, events and resources designed to support your personal and professional development, nurture your creativity, and enhance your leadership, management, and technical skills.
The unit works collaboratively with the Research Support Team, the Teaching Enhancement Unit, and the Graduate Studies Office, as well as engaging regularly with our researcher and academic colleagues, to design our courses and workshop. Our courses
for researchers target particular needs specific to researcher professional development and equip you with important transferable skills.

USEFUL LINKS
Visit the Researcher Development Hub 

Explore our Learning Catalogue 

@DCULearningDev

Professional Skills for Research Leaders (PSRL) is a bespoke programme that provides skills-based training opportunities to encourage your personal and professional growth as a researcher.
The PSRL will help you:
—    develop your career strategy within a broader research context
—    advance your grant writing skills
—    build on your capabilities as a team leader
—    establish and maintain fruitful research collaborations
—    develop your communication skills in a variety of capacities (including presenting at conferences, publishing your research and presenting your research on radio, TV and to industry)
The programme runs over a number of months with and is fully aligned with the DCU Researcher Career Framework (see later section).

Find out more about the Professional Skills for Research Leaders (PSRL) Programme.
 

All DCU colleagues have free access to LinkedIn Learning, which is an on-demand library of instructional video and audio courses covering the latest business, technology and creative skills. 

Dozens of video-based courses are added each week, teaching the leading-edge skills in multiple languages, including German, Spanish, Japanese and French. LinkedIn Learning creates personalised recommendations, so you can efficiently discover which courses are most relevant to your goals or job functions.

As a researcher, LinkedIn should be your go-to for building transferable and leading-edge skills. It will also give you different perspectives across a range of subjects.

With its potential to have a transformative effect on your career, mentoring is well worth engaging with. Researchers who integrate ideas and techniques from multiple mentors are the more likely to succeed in academia. Indeed, mentoring can have enormous benefits in terms of overall career direction whether you end up inside or outside academia.

Questions mentoring can help you address:

• How can I raise my profile, within and outside DCU?
• How can I transition into my new role?
• How can I advance my communication and influencing skills?
• What are my career goals and priorities? How can I achieve them?
• How can I improve my chances of getting more funding?
• How can I get recognition for my achievements at work?
• Which experiences are most valuable to my career?

The DCU staff mentoring programme is available to all staff across

the University, including researchers. The mentoring relationship provides possibilities for learning and growth for both the mentee and the mentor, bringing together experienced mentors with less experienced mentees.

The mentoring conversations are a balance between knowledge transfer and genuine open discussion between two people who have mutual respect. The outcome you can expect from mentoring is advanced knowledge and a greater recognition of your own potential and capabilities, essential in your ability to flourish throughout your career.

Find out more about DCU Staff Mentoring Programme

Offered as part of the Professional Skills for Research Leaders (PRSL) programme, group mentoring is an excellent mechanism for fostering successful career development and nurturing long-lasting relationships and collaborations. 

As part of the Professional Skills for Research Leaders programme, groups of up to eight postdocs are led by a mentor who is an academic staff member with experience of supervising postdoctoral fellows.

The advantages of group mentoring, compared to 1:1 mentoring, are that more ground can be covered, which means increased knowledge, many viewpoints and ideas can be accessed allowing you to leverage the experiences of your peers and that of a senior researcher. The approach also offers more flexibility in a busy academic environment.

Reverse Mentoring provides a platform for students to share their experience of using technology and how they learn with you – what works, what doesn’t, and what their challenges and chief concerns are. A reverse-mentoring partnership also gives you an opportunity to be introduced to the broad range of apps and websites that students use to acquire and create learning and knowledge.

Dr Wine Tesseur was a Marie Skłodowska and Irish Research Council postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies. For her project ‘Translation as Empowerment: Translation as a contributor to human rights in the Global South’, she collaborated with the Irish humanitarian NGO GOAL as an official project partner.

Why consider collaborating with a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO)?

1)    Maximise social impact
Collaborating with an NGO will ensure that your research aims and goals are directly related to the real-life challenges that NGOs meet in their work. Your research will contribute to positive change in the work of your partner organisation, and potentially in the wider NGO sector. This can be a very satisfying outcome of your research.

2)    New working experience
You will gain first-hand work experience with an NGO. Firstly, it will make you an even better collaborator in future, because you will understand the NGO context better. Secondly, it will give you a glimpse of a potential alternative career outside academia in which research skills are of high value.

3)    New skills
You will learn and enhance a range of skills, including negotiation skills, adapting to new working environments, learning to communicate your research ideas clearly and convincingly, etc
 

What are the challenges of collaborating with an NGO?
Time consuming: Finding a research partner and setting up the collaboration can be very time intensive. Throughout your research project as well, you may lose time because your NGO partner may be busy with more urgent tasks. This can lead to delays in your own project.

Collaboration is negotiation: You won’t be able to pick and choose what you want to work on – your partner will only get on board if they can see value in your project. Negotiation will be a constant part of your collaboration.

Managing expectations: NGOs tend to work to shorter timescales and expect very practical research outputs. It will be up to you to understand what your partner’s expectations are and to make clear if you can meet these or not, and why.

How to do it:

1)    Finding an NGO partner
Networking is the most important way in. Try to gradually grow your network – for example, by participating in events that NGOs you are interested in will also attend, and follow up with e-mails or LinkedIn invitations to people you have met. Another important way in is through the network of your colleagues: does anyone have good connections with NGOs already? In my experience, these types of introductions are the most effective. Finally, for some research grants that encourage intersectoral collaborations, the funder may have a list of interested organisations available. For example, the Irish Research Council often has lists like this available for grants where collaboration with civic partners is required.

2)    Convincing an NGO to collaborate and establishing credibility
Once you have identified an NGO that you would like to collaborate with and you have found a way to connect with them, the next challenge is
to convince them to become your partner. Before contacting the NGO, consider carefully how you want to pitch your idea, how you can show credibility, and what the NGO would gain from collaborating with you. Prepare an A4 sheet that outlines these three points and send it along when you establish contact.

3)    Maintaining a good relationship
Every collaboration comes with its challenges, and it is important to recognise this from the outset. Carefully define the responsibilities and expectations from the beginning, and agree on for example what data can be shared and how you will handle publications (authorship by whom; process for approval). When there is a conflict, you will be able to reach back to this agreement as a basis for dialogue and to come to a consensus
 

This Testimonial is from 2021. 

Dr Sumona Mukherjee was a Research Support Officer at DCU. An Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship awardee, Sumona subsequently interned with the Council working on their pilot Laureate funding scheme.

I work as a Research Support Officer in DCU. I completed my undergraduate and masters degrees at the University of Calcutta, India, in Chemistry and Environmental Systems Management, respectively. In 2015, I graduated with a PhD from University of Malaya (UM), Malaysia, in Environmental Sciences. After completing PhD, I served as a postdoc research fellow in UM. In 2016 I moved to Ireland and joined NUI Galway, having being awarded the Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship.

As an academic professional, I had contributed to eight national and internationally funded projects and published 16 research articles in the field of wastewater treatment, with an h-index of 10. In addition to research, during my PhD and postdoctoral work I was always involved in the management of grant, reporting, liaising with different partners and stakeholders, organising national and international workshops, training programmes and coordinate meetings.

When the opportunity to work as an Irish Research Council postdoc intern in the pilot Laureate award scheme came up, I decided to take the internship for a break from academia and to see if I liked working in the administrative environment. To my surprise I really liked working in the administrative side of research. The internship was invaluable in terms of developing my interpersonal communication skills and knowledge of the Irish and EU funding system and also helped me to broaden my network.
 

This Testimonial is from 2021. 

Dr Clare Higgins, Innovation Analyst at Fenergo, a client lifecycle management solutions company based in Dublin. Clare completed her PhD at DCU and research fellowship at Trinity College, Dublin.

I studied Applied Physics in DCU to PhD level, where I focused on optical oxygen sensors. A Research fellowship at TCD followed, which allowed me to explore what I really excelled at – data analysis, interpretation and presentation. I started to pay attention to those activities I enjoyed most and align these with industry – but jumping from academia to industry wasn’t that easy. The key obstacle is that most recruiters have little idea what’s involved in a research postgrad or postdoc. My advice – target hiring managers directly and, if you can, avoid recruitment agencies. Many researcher skills translate exceptionally well to industry: problem definition, problem solving, business writing, and working in groups and on teams. Remember, a PhD opens doors and gives you instant credibility albeit with the occasional assumption that you may not have real-world acumen!

I eventually landed a great role at Genworth, now AXA partners, and worked as an Analyst on their Commercial Actuarial team developing new products. Developing insurance products gave me the real-world access I’d been seeking. Software engineering has always been an interest of mine but I’d assumed I didn’t have the skills to secure a job in industry. More recently I’ve worked as an Innovation Analyst at Fenergo, reimagining software solutions for corporate banking clients – so don’t make assumptions about the application of your skills.
 

Ignore the myths
I heard lots of scary myths about industry while working in universities. Most people’s views were based on some 1980s image of office life where everyone dresses formally, obeys a strict 9am start under the watchful eye of their boss, and leaves independent thought at the door. That view couldn’t be further from the truth.

Advantages to working in industry
—    Being solely responsible for your research creates a mindset that understands accountability and delivering reliable results.
—    When developing a new product
or feature I track my success by the adoption of that product by customers. Difficult to find in research.
—    More structure, great flexibility and more sociable hours.
My advice for postdocs
—    Ask questions about career prospects in the industry
you’re targeting. Don’t just form opinions on what you read – connect those experiencing life in that role or industry.
—    Try to prioritise your own development – improve your communications and public speaking; hone your skills at writing proposals.
—    Ensure you have quantifiable achievements, for example X number of awards for presentations or Y number of publications. Future employers, who might not understand the details of your research achievements, will appreciate that you can set and achieve goals.
—    Don’t worry too much about where a certain contract fits on your plan for your career. The plan is going to change a lot, just pile up the experience and make sure to learn from each piece.
—    Take all the opportunities you get, travel where possible, chat to everyone.
—    Be coachable and approachable!
 

This Testimonial is from 2021. 

Lisa Donaldson a Learning Technologist who previously worked in the Teaching Enhancement Unit in DCU. 

The use of e-Portfolios in higher education has grown significantly over the last ten years. They are seen as a dynamic medium for recording and showcasing learning as well as a powerful tool for reflection. e-Portfolios offer an online space to collect, reflect, and share work and experiences. They can be defined as a collection of digital artefacts articulating experiences, achievements and learning (p. 6 JISC, 2008) or perhaps in a broader way by Corley and Zubizarreta (2012) “The learning portfolio… becomes more than a product, a simple repository of artefacts; it becomes a process of reflection, of organizing, prioritizing, analysing, and communicating one’s work and its value, which may prompt insights and goals.”

Viewed in this way, e-Portfolios can offer a number of benefits to researchers:
They can
—    Support a wide variety of media to evidence research and learning, such as PDFs, Infographics, video, podcasts and text-based outputs
—    Enable critical reflection through reflective logs and diaries
—    Support critical thinking and connection making in the curation and selection of artefacts included
—    Increase digital literacies

e-Portfolios can support postdocs in exploring and documenting where they are now, where they’re going and how they plan to get there. They may contain all or some of the following:

—    Evidence related to courses/CPD taken, programs of study, etc.
—    Details around research projects
—    Writing samples
—    Teaching diary
—    Evidence of creativity and performance
—    Evidence of extracurricular or co-curricular activities, including examples of leadership
 

The Reflect e-Portfolio is available to all students and colleagues at DCU. To find more details, please visit Reflect Support.
 

This Testimonial is from 2021. 

Dr Wine Tesseur was a Marie Skłodowska and Irish Research Council postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies. For her project ‘Translation as Empowerment: Translation as a contributor to human rights in the Global South’, she collaborated with the Irish humanitarian NGO GOAL as an official project partner.

Why consider collaborating with a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO)?

1) Maximise social impact
Collaborating with an NGO will ensure that your research aims and goals are directly related to the real-life challenges that NGOs meet in their work. Your research will contribute to positive change in the work of your partner organisation, and potentially in the wider NGO sector. This can be a very satisfying outcome of your research.

2) New working experience
You will gain first-hand work experience with an NGO. Firstly, it will make you an even better collaborator in future, because you will understand the NGO context better. Secondly, it will give you a glimpse of a potential alternative career outside academia in which research skills are of high value.

3) New skills
You will learn and enhance a range of skills, including negotiation skills, adapting to new working environments, learning to communicate your research ideas clearly and convincingly, etc.
 

What are the challenges of collaborating with an NGO?

Time consuming: Finding a research partner and setting up the collaboration can be very time intensive. Throughout your research project as well, you may lose time because your NGO partner may be busy with more urgent tasks. This can lead to delays in your own project.

Collaboration is negotiation: You won’t be able to pick and choose what you want to work on – your partner will only get on board if they can
see value in your project. Negotiation will be a constant part of your collaboration.

Managing expectations: NGOs tend to work to shorter timescales and expect very practical research outputs. It will be up to you to understand what your partner’s expectations are and to make clear if you can meet these or not, and why.
 

How to do it

1) Finding an NGO partner
Networking is the most important way in. Try to gradually grow your network – for example, by participating in events that NGOs you are interested in will also attend, and follow up with e-mails or LinkedIn invitations to people you have met. Another important way in is through the network of your colleagues: does anyone have good connections with NGOs already? In my experience, these types of introductions are the most effective. Finally, for some research grants that encourage intersectoral collaborations, the funder may have a list of interested organisations available. For example, the Irish Research Council often has lists like this available for grants where collaboration with civic partners is required.

2) Convincing an NGO to collaborate and establishing credibility
Once you have identified an NGO that you would like to collaborate with and you have found a way to connect with them, the next challenge is
to convince them to become your partner. Before contacting the NGO, consider carefully how you want to pitch your idea, how you can show credibility, and what the NGO would gain from collaborating with you. Prepare an A4 sheet that outlines these three points and send it along when you establish contact.

3) Maintaining a good relationship
Every collaboration comes with its challenges, and it is important to recognise this from the outset. Carefully define the responsibilities and expectations from the beginning, and agree on for example what data can be shared and how you will handle publications (authorship by whom; process for approval). When there is a conflict, you will be able to reach back to this agreement as a basis for dialogue and to come to a consensus.
 

This Testimonial is from 2021. 

Stephen Daniels a Professor in the School of Electronic Engineering in DCU and leads a research team focussed on technological applications of plasma. Stephen has founded several technology companies and is formerly CTO of EI Electronics in Shannon.

Perspective is always a good thing. Several years ago I was presented with an opportunity to take a three-year sabbatical to lead an R&D department in a leading Irish electronics company. I had come to
the natural end of a specific cycle of research that included a fruitful collaboration with a semiconductor multinational, and I felt the timing, as much as it can be, was right.

By traditional metrics, this was a questionable career decision. Particularly with regard to research, taking three years away from the core activities of conducting and managing research, developing a research team, and sourcing funding, has a serious short-term impact on traditional research outputs.

Momentum is also important and when momentum is lost it takes additional effort to get things moving. However, these challenges are surmountable and the experience gained and skills developed while working in industry were and are invaluable. I gained a new and deeper perspective on R&D in industry and an appreciation of the practicalities needed for a meaningful collaboration between academia and industrial partners.

I’m an engineer and I’m driven to find, design, and implement solutions to problems. Most of the time, for discovery or innovation to translate into impact, an industrial or enterprise partner is essential in order to deliver the solution or product into the marketplace.
 

Truly understanding the motivations, perspectives, and operational dynamics of industrial collaborators is a major competitive advantage for an academic researcher which ultimately leads to better and
more informed research proposals, better problem definition, and more credibility when it comes to developing industrial collaborations. This is obviously very important, but even more important is the understanding of the industrial component of the innovation delivery chain, which is a tool that can be effectively used to ensure your research is meaningful and positively impacts the world and people’s lives.

Spending a meaningful amount of time in industry in order to strengthen your personal development is both challenging and rewarding. You need to be clear on your motivations and immerse yourself fully in order to maximise the benefits of the experience. At the same time, it’s important not to lose perspective and remember why you are there so that when you
return you are better positioned to be a successful an impactful researcher.