When we approach people with our blog opportunity, a common response is, “I’d like to give it a go, but I’m not sure where to start”. Getting started can be the hardest part. The commitment of finally putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) can feel like the biggest individual step to overcome. Research Hive’s mission is to create a space and opportunity for students and early career researchers to get initial (or more!) writing experience, but we actively want to help you on your way. We are announcing a new guide and a plan for online workshops!

Research Hive’s First Workshop

Our team was invited to host a workshop at a careers event organised by UoM’s Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health’s Doctoral Academy. Titled “Taking a Reflective Approach to Career Development Beyond Your PGR Journey”, workshops focused on ways PhD students can develop skills and find opportunities outside of their core research project.

For our workshop, we introduced:

• The benefits of blogging: Skill development, networking, CV building, creativity (and more!).
• How to get started: We started thinking creatively about explaining our research and how to accessibly explain complex topics.

We received some excellent early feedback on this workshop. Attendees felt it was useful and that it boosted their motivation to get writing! We have developed a new, freely available resource titled “How did others do it?” to help writers get started. It looks at examples of blog posts and the styles and techniques used. We hope it will give additional pointers on where to start, on top of our general writing guide. Our guides get updated regularly, so be sure to bookmark them!

New Guide Here: “How did others do it?”

Future Workshops

We are excited to be working on improving our workshop and adapting it to host online. We will be covering how our platform works, why blogging is a great opportunity, how to get started, and a chance to start discussing ideas. Announcements of dates and sign-ups will be posted across our blog and social media accounts. These will be open to everyone interested in getting involved. Our blog is PhD student-focused, but not exclusive! Use the form below to register your interest and hear directly about confirmed workshop dates via email. We will only use this mailing list for workshop dates and nothing else. For other regular updates, subscribe to the blog or follow us on social media.

Register Interest Here