Are you a Mature PGR studying at the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield, or York? Mature PGRs can be anyone who started their research doctorate at any point from 21 years of age, after some sort of gap in their education.

You might well have caring responsibilities, a full-time job, or simply lots of life’s balls to keep in the air – top tip: focus on the glass balls, the rubber ones will bounce.

You bring life experience to your research, but it might not always feel like that. Does it sometimes feel like you are treated like every other PGR? Are your expertise, knowledge, and skills overlooked? Do your considerable capabilities and capacities remain unacknowledged? 

Yet… becoming a PGR can still be fraught with practical difficulties and struggles with identity. How do you access the library? When do you start your ethics application? Can you access funding to help you attend a conference? Where do you start with writing your first academic article? How do you apply what you already know in this new context? Does your professional identity shift slowly and surely to an academic one, or all at once? Who can you talk to about this stuff? 

Come to this launch event where Marianne Talbot, PGR in Education at Leeds, and Ruth Winden, Careers with Research Consultant at Leeds will seek to start the conversation about these issues and more. We don’t claim to have all the answers, but we would like to stimulate intelligent debate, introduce mature PGRs to each other, and perhaps plant the seeds of a network which we hope will flourish and support mature PGRs for years to come. 

Please register using this Microsoft Form – we are asking for some basic demographic information, which it is entirely optional for you to complete (we just need your name and university email address to register), but which will help us understand the mature PGR population across the White Rose Partnership better. Your data will only be accessed by Marianne, Ruth, and the White Rose team supporting this initiative.