Develop skills and insights to make progress on your career goals and professional challenges in a peer group setting.

Applications close Monday 7 April 2025 at 9am

PeCo is a peer coaching programme designed to support early career researchers who have completed a PhD to develop coaching skills and insights for their own career development. The programme is led by a professional coach with many years' experience working with academic researchers.

Many researchers face similar sorts of challenges in their roles – for example, repeated fixed-term contracts, access to senior support, and time management. PeCo brings together a group of peers at a similar stage, enabling you to uncover insights relating to navigating issues which you often share with others. Previous participants have found that the programme has helped them build their skills in ways that have helped in management and supervisory elements of their roles.   

PeCo is deliberately kept at a smaller size to aid discussions and connection, and to enable greater support from the programme facilitators. 

Some of our previous PeCo participants

Dr Zoe Ryan

Zoe had just submitted her PhD thesis and was awaiting her viva (now passed!) when she started PeCo. At this pivotal point, when she had recently started in a postdoctoral role, Zoe felt the need to dedicate some time to re-establish direction and goals for moving forward from here. In her current role as postdoctoral researcher with the WISDOM Research Network, Zoe is working to bring together school communities and academic researchers to enable high quality mental health research. She is interested in building strong collaborative relationships and appreciates learning from others. Zoe was part of the 2024 PeCo cohort.

Dr Nina Higson-Sweeney

Nina had just submitted her PhD thesis and was a full-time teaching-focused Lecturer in Clinical Psychology when she started PeCo. She was navigating post-PhD life, including writing grant applications, work-life balance, and teaching versus research roles. During PeCo, she passed her viva, transitioned to part-time working to start a postdoctoral research role, and submitted her first grant application. She has since been successful with that funding. Nina was part of the 2024 PeCo cohort.

Dr Peter Woodward

Peter was the programme lead in learning disabilities nursing when he was part of PeCo. Predominantly in a teaching role, and having gained a lot of experience of teaching, supervision, and professional experience in inpatient and community settings, Peter was looking to move roles, progress in mental health research and develop networks in this area. He has particular interests in the mental health of people with learning disabilities. Peter was part of the 2024 PeCo cohort.

Dr Justin Yang

Justin is a Research Fellow in psychiatric epidemiology, with particular interests in dual diagnosis: substance use disorders and severe mental illness. In addition to pursuing his own ambitions for research in this area (he recently won a postdoctoral fellowship), Justin has been keen to develop other skills by taking on leadership roles in his department, and participating in the editorial board of a substance use journal. Justin was part of the 2024 PeCo cohort.