Sussex Researcher School

RDP: Learn

PGR workshops to get you thinking about the knowledge and intellectual abilities you need to conduct your research, and that tie in with the first Vitae RDF domain.

These workshops will run in November and December.
Explore the workshops on these pages or visit our scheduled events listings for sessions that are currently open for booking. If a workshop isn't bookable, add your name to the waiting list and we'll let you know when registration opens.
Bringing creativity, reflexivity and voice into writing - Mid/late stages

This three-hour academic writing workshop is geared towards any postgraduate researcher who is actively engaged in writing at any stage of their studies. The key aim of the workshop is to discuss and pilot ways of bringing greater creativity and reflexivity into your writing.

Together we will draw across our experiences from different doctoral topics, approaches, stages, and disciplines. There will be opportunities to explore different ideas, share experiences of academic writing, as well as engage in writing activities.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the workshop you will:

  • Have ideas of how to stimulate creativity
  • Have a better understanding of your relationship with writing
  • Leave re-energised to approach your writing in new ways, whether in terms of process, style or content

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers in the mid-late stage of their research degree and from all disciplines, and ECRs from all disciplines, broadly encompassing research assistants, postdoctoral researchers and research fellows at grades 6-8.

Workshop feedback

  • "Unpacking alternative perspectives on what constitutes 'good' or 'proper' academic writing."
  • "The exercises and group sessions; the discussions; to be honest it was all brilliant."
  • "Demystifying academic jargon. The task of writing from an opposing view point. Hearing others' perspectives."

About the facilitators

This workshop is facilitated by Dr Emily Danvers, Dr Fawzia Haeri Mazanderani, Dr Rebecca Webb, and Dr Perpetua Kirby from the School of Education and Social Work.

Booking information

For online workshops, the link to join the session will be shared to your Sussex email address one working day before the event.

Introduction to entrepreneurship for postgraduate researchers - At any stage

This workshop will give you an overview of entrepreneurship and the support available to you from the Entrepreneurship team at Sussex.

We’ll explore:

  • Pros and cons of starting a business/social enterprise or freelancing
  • Approaches to developing your idea
  • Key considerations – business planning, protecting your idea, legal structures, funding options
  • Case studies
  • Support from the Sussex Entrepreneurship Team - workshops, resources, and 1:1 appointments

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers in the mid-late stage of their research degree and from all disciplines.

About the facilitators

The Careers, Employability and Entrepreneurship team is based in the Student Centre. They work closely with post-graduate researchers to enhance their professional identity, employability and career awareness. They can help you to explore your career ideas and find out more about the pathways open to you both within and beyond academia.

Click here to book your place via Careerhub

Introduction to R - At any stage

This self-directed module aims to introduce you to carrying out statistical analysis using R. It assumes that you will have no prior familiarity with R, but that you have completed a course in statistics that includes topics such as multiple regression and multivariate analysis of variance.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course you will:

  • Be able to run analyses in R, including the use of R Studio and Deducer
  • Understand objects and functions and be able to write simple functions
  • Be able to enter, save and manage data files
  • Carry out statistical analysis, including multiple regression, logistic regression, and linear mixed models.

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers and early career researchers at any stage in their career.

Intermediate R - At any stage

This self-directed module builds on the Introduction to R course. Students should have some familiarity with R, and have attended Introduction to R or equivalent (essentially an introduction to the 'tidyverse').

The first day will be devoted to further exploration of the graphics package ggplot2, including comparing groups, and customising chart appearance using scale functions and themes.

The second day will introduce R Markdown as an alternative way of working with R and producing documents reporting analysis. We shall also look further at data manipulation, including data restructuring and joining datasets.

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers at all stages and from all disciplines.

Introduction to SPSS - At any stage

This self-directed module is ideal for researchers with no previous experience of using SPSS and covers the basics to get you started. This is a hands-on session focusing on how to use the SPSS programme. A basic knowledge of statistical concepts and terms is required and participants are expected to attend both parts of the course.

Working through a number of practical exercises, you will learn some of the key functions of SPSS, from data entry and creating basic output, to plotting figures and running more advanced statistical analyses.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course you will:

  • Enter data, plot figures and create some basic output such as descriptive statistics
  • Run t-tests, correlations and simple linear regressions
  • Run factorial ANOVA's
  • Use the split file and filter functions
  • Run a multiple regression
  • Examine outliers, normality and transform data

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers at all stages and from all disciplines.

Keeping up to date with published research in your area - Any stage

There are a number of quick and effective ways to keep yourself up to date with the research going on in your field. This workshop will explore some of the key tools and techniques available, from alerting services to social media.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the workshop you will have:

  • Learnt how to set up database alerts to discover newly published articles and track relevant citations and authors
  • Discovered services for keeping up to date with new issues of journals
  • Found out about using key resources and social media to discover who is researching in a similar field to you

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers at all stages and from all disciplines, and ECRs from all disciplines, broadly encompassing research assistants, postdoctoral researchers and research fellows at grades 6-8.

Workshop feedback

  • "Very useful to know how many ways you can keep up to date! I had no idea you could receive alerts from so many resources"
  • "Everything was explained very clearly and the presenters had a great deal of knowledge even if very subject-specific questions were asked"
  • "Very helpful. I found fresh ways to source resources for my research"

About the facilitators

The Library Research Support team support researchers at all levels across the University. They offer bookable one-to-one sessions tailored to suit your specific research needs, run various group training workshops, and organise seminars and events to engage with the research community on and off campus.

Booking information

For online workshops, the link to join the session will be shared to your Sussex email address one working day before the event.

Tools and methods for capturing web content - At any stage

This session will introduce you to tools for capturing web content and the underlying archival principles that drive such work. We will look at three tools – ArchiveWeb, Conifer and Wget - which let you create interactive copies of an existing website and download web assets. This session may be of interest to people whose research involves analysis of web content that changes over time or who have their own website they wish to preserve beyond the life of a project.

Each tool will be introduced through practical demonstrations with time for participants to trial them in a workshop setting if they wish. Participants should bring their own device. Pre-installation of the tools prior to the session is highly recommended if you would like to trial them.

All the tools are free to use and can be found via the following links:

Learning outcomes

By the end of this workshop you will have:

  • Learnt about the basic principles of web archiving
  • Learnt about ArchiveWeb, Conifer and Wget as tools for capturing web content

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers at all stages and from all disciplines.

About the facilitator

This workshop is facilitated by Helen Webb, Research Data Management Librarian and Duncan Harrison, Research Data and Digital Preservation Officer from the Library Research Support Team.

Booking information

For online workshops, the link to join the session will be shared to your Sussex email address one working day before the event.

Sussex Researcher School

E: researcher-school@sussex.ac.uk