Welcome to the University of Birmingham Postgraduate Researcher Development blog.
The purpose of this blog is to discuss topics related to personal and professional development for postgraduate researchers at the University of Birmingham. Topics will cover the full range covered by Vitae‘s Researcher Development Framework 2025, and each post will hopefully get you thinking about the topic and point you in the direction of further resources to support your development.
Developing yourself as a researcher is important because you don’t start postgraduate research with all the skills and knowledge you are going to need to complete your postgraduate programme, disseminate your research or take the next step into your chosen career. There will be discipline-specific knowledge and skills you need, but also wider and transferable skills like academic writing, perseverance, collaboration, understanding of ethics, publishing, funding, and so on.
The blog ran from June 2016 to August 2025 at https://uobpgrdevelopment.wordpress.com/, moving to its current home in September 2025. It is maintained by Libraries and Learning Resources and the University Doctoral School at the University of Birmingham.
AI policy
The authors take full responsibility and ownership of the content published on this blog. Generative AI tools are not generally used to develop content, unless explicitly stated and credited as an author. However, generative AI tools may be used to support the editing process, including choosing titles and creating excerpts, uncredited.
Privacy policy
Data collected via this blog will be processed in accordance with the University of Birmingham’s Data Protection Policy.