Research Environment
Our framework brings together students from different disciplines, helping to foster the university’s community of scholars. This in turn enables research students to broaden their horizons and interact with scholars from other disciplines and the public: an essential skill in today’s world.
We support and nurture the development of colleagues at the beginning of their research careers and provide continuous support to our researchers as they progress in their chosen fields.
Discover the active support available to develop our researchers and the values, aims and governance underpinning our research culture in the School of Natural and Built Environment.
Early career lecturing staff are allocated a senior colleague as mentor, have an initially light teaching load, and access to university training courses to help develop their research, leadership and teaching skills (e.g., all complete PGCHET and ‘Supervising Research Students’ courses).
ECRs also enjoy priority access to ring-fenced PhD (DfE) studentships and an informal peer review system to support them in the preparation of grant applications. All incoming academic staff are supported through start-up packages for equipment, networking and other research activities.
We are committed to making doctoral students part of the life of the School and the wider university. We have created a bespoke training programme for new PhDs; more advanced students can avail of training opportunities offered by the School and by the University's Graduate School. Our PhDs can apply for paid teaching experience from their second year.
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We are working towards gaining a SWAN Bronze Award in 2020 which will reflect the work of our merged School to:
- improve career development and progression, especially for female staff.
- improve and promote work-life balance and a family friendly environment for all staff.
- improve gender equality and academic progression for students, especially women.
- create a more egalitarian workplace culture.
We invest millions in the development of our research facilities to ensure that our staff, students and collaborators have the very best equipment to help them in their work.
Our state-of-the-art research facility containing a large suite of open plan multipurpose research laboratories including numerous tissue culture, molecular biology, biochemistry and microbiology laboratories. A number of our facilities are also available for use in commercial testing and consultancy.
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