Training and Professional Development

Academic Year 2024-25

Welcome to the Doctoral College Training Page for UL PGRs.

Details of many of our PGR training and professional development opportunities can be found below:

Doctoral College Training for PGRs, Autumn & Spring Semesters, 2024-25

UL Doctoral College is committed to providing our postgraduate researchers (PGRs) with the chance to enhance their research skills, competencies, and professional development and career opportunities, during their time at the university.

As well as our webinar series on research skills, the Doctoral College provides an annual Summer School in Generic & Transferable Skills, a monthly PGR Orientation Café, UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) lunches, as well as an extensive programme of workshops and seminars dedicated to improving aspects of research and other skills required for doctoral studies.

Furthermore, UL Doctoral College is part of the DOC TALENT4EU consortium, a Horizon-Europe funded project which is aimed at enhancing the employability of PhD candidates. One of the tasks of the Doctoral College in the pilot phase of the project was to design and create an online course dedicated to .

Teaching Workshops for PGR Tutors

The UL Centre for Transformative Learning (CTL) will offer workshops throughout 2024-25 aimed at PGRs who are new, or relatively new, to teaching at UL, e.g. ‘Introduction to teaching in Higher Education’, 'Writing Your Teaching Philosophy’. The workshops focus on key areas related to teaching in Higher Education and provide a set of ideas and methods to help prepare PGRs for a new role in relation to developing their approach to teaching and learning.

CTL also provides online modules from which can be of great benefit to UL PGRs engaged in teaching: (i) Essentials for teaching and learning online (ii) Essentials of e-moderating (see more details below).

Essentials for teaching and learning online

PGRs at UL can register for the “Essentials for teaching and learning online” programme, developed by the REAP Project, a collaboration between UL, MIC and TUS.

This short course, which takes about 7 hours to complete, is aimed at those who are new to teaching.

The course offers theoretical background to best practice in teaching and learning, along with practical strategies and resources to help tutors and teachers.

Research Integrity

UL offers online Research Integrity Training through the Epigeum training portal. All research students should undertake Research Integrity Training.
Click on this link to find out how to access the programme, along with guidelines around usage, content, and data protection.

NVivo and SPSS available for PGRs via Topdesk

NVivo and SPSS are now available for all PGRs online.

NVivo helps you discover more from your qualitative and mixed methods data.

SPSS (“Statistical Package for the Social Sciences”)&�Բ��;is a very useful programme used for statistical analysis.

Guidelines for Postgraduate Researchers using Thesis TURNITIN Checker

Postgraduate researchers (PGRs) who wish to run a similarity report on a piece of your work may use the ‘Thesis TURNITIN checker’ on SULIS for this purpose. The Thesis TURNITIN checker facility is to enable you to identify similarities between your work and published material already in the public domain. These Guidelines will help to ensure your compliance with the academic and research integrity policies of the university

As a currently registered PGR or prospective applicant, you can familiarise yourself with some library resources and supports to identify some of the critical skills you will need to carry out the research required for your thesis. e.g. information/source appraisal and academic referencing.

The Glucksman Library runs a series of workshops throughout the academic year which have particular relevance for PGRs, such as, 'Doing a Literature Review Using the Library's Resources', 'Critically Evaluating Sources', and 'How to use EndNote Web for your academic referencing'.

Details of all such workshops can be found at the Library Events Page.

Transferable Skills workshops

Throughout the academic year, GPS coordinates transferable skills workshops for postgraduate research students as required. Workshops taking place during the academic year 2023/24 include:

Questionnaire Design
Survey & Sampling
Introduction to SPSS
Basic Statistics
Exploring Relationships & Regression Theories
Working with Long Documents

For further information on the above workshops please contact Anne O'Dwyer, Research Training Coordinator, Doctoral College, at anne.odwyer@ul.ie or doctoralcollege@ul.ie

LinkedIn Learning for UL PGRs

All postgraduate researchers at UL can access thousands of courses and videos developed by LinkedIn Learning to help you add to your range of skills, training and career development.

To help you, take a look at the excellent open-access platform developed by King’s College London, Centre for Doctoral Studies, mapping LinkedIn Learning resources (videos and courses/modules) against the Vitae Researcher Development Framework (RDF).

The UL Regional Writing Centre (RWC) supports PhD Writers’ Groups by offering PhD writers a quiet, distraction-free space for writing and by sharing knowledge of how writers’ groups can be motivating and productive. The RWC also offers PGRs various workshops and training events throughout the academic year. More information about these events can be found at the

Click on the above to find links to previous GPS webinars on Research Skills.

Watch interviews with UL PGRs and faculty for some great insights about their research journey at UL.

DOCTORAL COLLEGE PAST EVENTS

The Final of the 2023 Thesis-in-Three competition was held during Research Week and featured 12 excellent finalists who have won their way through to the decider after very competitive faculty heats. Have a look at how our PhD candidates summarise their research and its impact in just three minutes.

PGR Orientation, Autumn Semester, 27th October, 2022

Orientation for incoming and existing PGRs took place in The Pavilion, UL North Campus on Thursday, October 27th.

NVivo Workshops for PGRs, November 7th & 8th, 2022

QDATRAINING will provide two NVivo workshops for UL PGRs on November 7th and 8th.

(no limit on numbers of UL PGRs
(limited to 20 PGRs)

Picture This! competition for UL PGRs - Communicating Research, April 2022

Read about the first Picture This! competition for UL PGRs, who were asked to represent their research in a photograph and 280-character caption. The winner of Picture This! 2022 was Mary Curtin, whose work depicted inherent gender inequalities in farm ownership.

Doctoral College Summer School in Generic and Transferable Skills 2022

The Doctoral College Summer School in Generic and Transferable Skills (18 ECTS) took place between May and August 2022. It consisted of a Residential Week (in separate face-to-face and online formats) for UL PGRs followed by a series of online activities in three different blocks, with each block consisting of two separate modules over a four-week period. The next Summer School for UL PGRs will begin in May 2023.

Watch the highly-acclaimed final of the 2022 Thesis-in-Three competition in which UL PGRs talk about their research and its impact in just three minutes!