This programme helps ECRs learn how to approach idea generation, preliminary project research, and horizon scanning to ensure that they have a solid foundation in finding and evaluating their ideas throughout their entire academic career. This helps them move beyond fixating on trendy topics or the latest buzzwords, and instead stand out from the crowd in a positive way. After all, it’s difficult to show that you’re leading the research agenda or carrying out state-of-the-art research if you’re doing what everyone else does.
Each session guides researchers through the practices that will allow them to develop viable research ideas, which in turn will make writing a proposal much more straightforward, with less scrambling to retrofit their idea to the proposal framework.
By the end of the course, participants will:
• Understand the competitive funding landscape they are operating in.
• Recognise the steps they must take to develop a robust research idea.
• Have applied the idea generation process to weigh up and evaluate their ideas.
• Be prepared for the proposal creation process.
Format
The next cohort of this programme will be delivered in January and February 2026. All sessions will be delivered online via Zoom between 10am–1pm on the following dates.
Session 1: 15 January 2026
Session 2: 29 January 2026
Session 3: 12 February 2026
Session 4: 26 February 2026
Sign up to the programme here.