Doctoral Training and Education Programme (DETD)

This includes full-time candidates in the first 12 months of their degree, and the part-time (including At-Distance) candidates in the first 24 months. Candidates in Stage One are in the beginning of their doctoral studies, focused on establishing their research question, designing their study and undertaking Project Approval.

Full-time candidates who are 12 - 24 months into their studies, and part-time candidates who are 24 - 48 months in. Candidates in this stage are usually working towards and undertaking fieldwork, beginning to build their academic and professional profiles, developing their research practice and analysing their data.

Full-time candidates who are 25 to 48 months into their studies, and part-time candidates who are 48 months and beyond. Candidates in this stage are usually analysing and writing up their data, stitching together their thesis, presenting at conferences, undertaking career development and preparing for submission and viva.

This area contains resources, workshops and events related to employability and careers support, and learning to become and behave as a competent, confident and independent researcher (which is a process that starts on day 1, and continues beyond your viva). We look at, among other things, learning to peer review other people’s work, looking after your wellbeing during your doctorate, coping with the challenges of academic writing, and building researcher resilience.

This area has workshops, events and resources designed to help you plan your research, and manage the project you are working on. This includes writing data management plans and working through the project approval and proposal development process, managing your monitoring and progression points, preparing for your viva and finalising your thesis, project administration, and using the Alternative Guide to Funding.

This area focuses on generalised rather than specialised research skills such as using GenAI tools, academic referencing, open and ethical research practice and principles, and writing good research questions. However, there are materials and workshops that will introduce you to different, more specialised approaches to analysing and collecting or generating data (methodology and methods). These are not pitched at an in-depth level, for the most part - further learning and development will be enabled by your supervisors and academic School and/or department, or your DTP if you are part of one.

This area of work focuses on writing - thesis, papers, reviews - and sharing research in different ways, with different audiences. Thus, we look at writing for publication, preparing for and attending conferences, and talking to specialist and generalised audiences. There is a sub-series on using MSWord effectively and a sub-series of materials on the nuts and bolts of writing in English called ‘Writer’s Toolbox’.