Academic

One of the great advantages of LinkedIn is that it allows you to widen your network, especially beyond academia. Unless you’re careful, though, it can quickly turn into another Facebook. You don’t want a feed full of self-promoting posts from people you’re never likely to meet or work with. In this guide, I’ll suggest a strategy for thinking about who should connect with and how you’ll engage with them. 1. What are you offering? The first step is to create a strong LinkedIn profile. If you’re asking people to connect and read your content, you need to explain why that’s a good use of their time. Your profile should explain who you are, your research interests, and what you’re currently working on. ...

Once you’ve built your LinkedIn profile, you might wonder what on earth you should post. If you struggle to talk about yourself, LinkedIn can be a nightmare. Although the platform is increasingly becoming a vital part of your academic web presence, it feels dominated by attention-seekers and show-offs. But you don’t need to toot your own horn. In this guide, I’ll discuss ways you can post on LinkedIn without feeling grubby or pushy. ...

Would you like to unlock the potential of LinkedIn to advance your career? In this interactive workshop, you’ll discover how to use LinkedIn to enhance your professional network, showcase your research, and increase your visibility in the academic community and beyond. You’ll learn how to: Create a professional-looking profile that highlights your achievements and interests. Build and maintain your network by connecting with peers, collaborators, and thought leaders in your field. Engage with the academic community through groups and discussions. Promote your research using LinkedIn tools and by signposting other platforms. Enhance your academic web presence without spending all day online. By the end of the workshop, you’ll have: ...

In the good old days, LinkedIn was just for the corporate world. Increasingly, though, it’s becoming an essential part of your academic web presence. Publishers, funders, employers, collaborators, and participants all expect to find your profile. Given its commercial emphasis, how can you make LinkedIn serve your research interests? In this guide, I’ll walk you through the main sections of a LinkedIn profile and suggest how you can use it to your best advantage. ...

The Delphi Method works for any group decision where thoughtful input matters more than speed. Instead of the traditional bun fight, members respond to questions silently and asynchronously. This approach can be effective for any kind of collaboration, such as a journal article, research project, or team narrative CV. Here’s a simple process you can adapt for your situation: Step 1: Appoint a facilitator Before you begin, designate one person to coordinate the process. This person: ...

We’ve all attended meetings where there’s been a lot of noise, but very little to show for it at the end. The discussion is dominated by a member with one terrible idea that they’re determined to force upon everyone. The quieter colleagues who actually have something valuable to say slump in defeat and start wondering what they’re going to have for dinner. The only outcome is agreement on the date for the next exhausting meeting. ...

Team Narrative CV: Climate Stories Collective ⚠️ Disclaimer: This is a fictitious team narrative CV created to demonstrate the OCAR structure in response to an equally fictitious funding call. Any resemblance to real research is coincidental. It’s designed to help you understand how the R4RI format works, not to provide a template to copy, not to provide a template to copy. Your narrative CV should reflect your team’s authentic experience and voice. Every funder has different requirements - always check current guidelines. There’s no single “correct” way to structure your narratives. Use this example for understanding the approach, then make it your own. Key features: ...

Here are the further resources for my workshop on Boosting Your Writing Productivity. Books 📚 Detox Your Writing: Strategies for Doctoral Researchers by Pat Thomson & Barbara Kamler Writing for Social Scientists by Howard S. Becker Stylish Academic Writing by Helen Sword Writing Science by Joshua Schimel Worksheets 📝 Writing Audit - Template for tracking the writing stage. Accountability 👀 Focusmate Write or Else Written? Kitten? Resources 🧭 Using the OCAR Structure for Academic Writing How to Use Zotero with Scrivener Time Tracking for Researchers: Improve Your Project Management with Data-Driven Planning Improve Your Flow with Reverse Outlining To Write More, You Need Less Time How to Defeat Your Inner Critic and Keep Writing Overcoming Procrastination and Staying Motivated: Three Strategies for Getting on with your Writing Overcoming Page Fright: Three Techniques for Planning a Piece of Academic Writing How to Become a Healthy Academic Writer

As discussed in the previous post, for each narrative CV, you need to identify your audience and gather relevant examples. Now it’s time to start writing. OCAR (Opening, Challenge, Action, Resolution) provides a framework for turning your achievements into compelling narratives that show how and why, not just what. In this post, we’ll explore a step-by-step method and some examples for the four modules in UKRI’s R4RI format. The Method For each module … ...

It’s important to remember that all academic writing is storytelling. Yes, even for scientists. The data don’t speak for themselves - you need to create a narrative that explains how you pursued your research, what happened, who was involved, and why it matters. Humans are wired to respond to stories, so it’s the perfect vehicle for communicating complex ideas. If storytelling feels alien to you, there’s good news: successful stories follow a common structure. There are many different structures you could use, but OCAR is especially helpful for academic writing. ...