"postdoc" blog posts
When holding on holds you back: navigating the sunk cost fallacy
It can be easy for postdocs to get caught in some version of the sunk cost fallacy when making career decisions – but how best to steer clear of its troublesome pull?
Posted on: 30 May 2024
Reflections on recruiting Prosper's first business-as-usual cohort at the University of Liverpool
Following the success of our Research England Development funded pilot cohorts, and with our UKRI-funded rollout to the wider sector ongoing, we are now embedding Prosper as part of ‘business as usual’ within researcher development at the University of Liverpool (UoL). Our first cohort in this new phase kicked off on 13th February 2024.
Posted on: 14 March 2024
An evaluation of Prosper's second career development pilot
Prosper’s second career development pilot cohort – involving over 120 postdocs across the Universities of Liverpool and Manchester and Lancaster University – ended in February 2023.
Posted on: 7 February 2024
Life as a Researcher doesn't have to mean Life as an Academic
As we finalise preparations for our first ‘business as usual’ Prosper career development cohort at the University of Liverpool in 2024, we find ourselves reflecting on our two pilot cohorts, and what we learned along the way.
Posted on: 24 January 2024
Prosper’s Second Cohort Celebrates End of Year
On Wednesday 15th February 2023, Prosper marked the successful completion of our second year-long career development pilot.
Posted on: 24 February 2023
Reflect, Explore, Act – An Evaluation of the First Prosper Pilot
As we publish our comprehensive evaluation of Prosper’s first career development pilot cohort, we take a look at some of the key findings, and explore the impact of the pilot on participants’ confidence, perceptions, aspirations and behaviours.
Posted on: 12 October 2022
Prosper Career Development Pilot: Ensuring a Diverse Cohort
As 75 postdocs from our three partner institutions join our second career development pilot, we reflect on the recruitment process and the make up of the final cohort.
Posted on: 26 May 2022
Recording and Reflecting on Prosper: A Snapshot Analysis of the Cohort Journals
As our first cohort of 53 postdocs from the University of Liverpool finish their year on our pilot cohort Dr Tamara West, one of our Research Staff Developers, reflects on the role of journaling and offers some insights from an analysis of journal entries.
Posted on: 11 April 2022
Prosper – First Cohort Celebrates end of year
On Tuesday 29th March 2022, the Prosper Project celebrated the end of the first cohort of postdocs from the University of Liverpool with a virtual leaving event.
Posted on: 1 April 2022
Prosper recruits second cohort of Postdocs
Following a competitive application process, 86 postdocs from across the University of Liverpool, Lancaster University and University of Manchester have been invited to join Prosper’s second career development pilot, conditional on the agreement of PIs and funders.
Posted on: 13 January 2022
My Prosper Journey
Alex James, a chemistry postdoc and a member of our first Prosper cohort based at the University of Liverpool, has just landed a new job at a new materials start-up company called Puraffinity. In his blog he talks about his experience of Prosper and how it helped him prepare for and ultimately land his job.
Posted on: 26 November 2021
Reflections from the Prosper pilot
As we open recruitment for our second postdoc career development pilot, we hear from 3 postdocs from our current cohort at the University of Liverpool. Egidijus Kukstas, School of Physical Sciences, Smitha Maretvadakethope, Department of Mathematical Sciences and Blanca Perez Sepulveda, Institute of Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences, reflect on their Prosper experiences so far.
Posted on: 23 August 2021
Prosper career development pilot: ensuring a diverse cohort
As 53 postdocs join our career development pilot, we reflect on the final make-up of this first cohort and the process of recruiting these participants
Posted on: 24 June 2021
Iterating the Prosper portal – what’s new for summer 2021?
Back in 2019 when Prosper began, stakeholder feedback and co-creation were baked into our core objectives for how we would develop this new approach to postdoc career development. We knew that if we wanted to achieve our goals of revolutionising the postdoc career development environment, we would need to build Prosper in a way that was driven by insights from postdocs, PIs and employers alike from day one if we were to provide what they really needed.
Posted on: 21 May 2021
How can you want what you don’t know about? The importance of career visibility
Our Research Staff Developers, Dr Fiona McBride and Dr Catherine Charlwood, take a look at what we know about postdocs' hopes and expectations for their careers, plus what Prosper can do to broaden these.
Posted on: 13 January 2021
Looking to the future during National Postdoc Appreciation Week
In the first of our guest blog series, Dr Annette Bramley, Director of the N8 Research Partnership, takes a look at how postdocs are vital to the North's Covid-19 recovery.
Posted on: 21 September 2020
Networking: making it work for you
Prosper team members, Katie McAllister and Joanie Magill, take a look at the value of networking and how to do it well. University of Liverpool staff can also explore this further through supporting content and resources on the Prosper portal linked throughout this piece.
Posted on: 17 August 2020
Co-creating Prosper with employers
Co-creating Prosper with employers – why it matters, how we’re doing it and what we’ve learnt so far. Prosper's Stakeholder Engagaement Manager, Katie McAllister, takes a look at the importance of co-creating our model with employer partners and what we've learnt so far about their needs and priorities.
Posted on: 18 June 2020
Self-assessment tools: Knowing me, knowing what to do
TL:DR Life is too short to try out every career you could possibly do, so how to narrow it down? Use self-assessment tools to help you clarify what you are both good at and like doing. Self-assessment tools are used across the board, both within and beyond academia.
Posted on: 18 June 2020
Myth-busting careers beyond academia – challenging assumptions and preconceptions
We've come across a range of preconceptions about work beyond academia. Read on to seperate fact from fiction.
Posted on: 18 June 2020
Who’s who? Profiling the UK postdoc population
In our latest blog, Prosper's Evaluation Researcher, Dr Peny (Panagiota) Sotiropoulou, dives into the data and looks at what it can tell us about the UK postdoc population.
Posted on: 27 May 2020