Photo by Ralph Katieb on Unsplash

Hello everyone! It feels a bit early to be sending festive greetings but since our next newsletter will be out early in the New Year we hope you all have a smooth run up to the Christmas break and a chance to switch off for a bit and enjoy some festive cheer towards the end of the month.

We are pleased to share with you another jam-packed edition hopefully answering lots of your questions about what life looks like post PhD. We are so fortunate as a community to straddle the PhD - Early Career Researcher divide and share what we have learnt between these two cohorts. We know it sometimes can feel like a big step between being a PhD 'student' and being in some way 'postdoc' but in many cases there are often only months between the two. Reaching across this divide can give a sense of perspective on closing out one's PhD and provide renewed motivation for the 'final push'. But wherever you are along the PhD 'journey' there is so much to be gained from mentorship, formal and informal, from others further along the way. We have been so fortunate in experiencing this ourselves and encourage those of you who feel nervous about reaching out to someone ahead of you to go for it, it will be worth it and undoubtedly they had similar help along the way to get them to where they are now.

We are excited by our recent committee meeting planning for 2023 and look forward to sharing with you a new programme of events and themes in the New Year- we have plans afoot to provide both a research and skills theme to bring even more opportunities to our fantastic research community. Do get in touch if you have any specific ideas you would like to see us do, and as ever, any of your own work you would like us to share (from books and articles to calls for papers or participants) - we love hearing from you!

Finally, if you are free next Thursday at midday, come along to our virtual Christmas social. All the details are in the newsletter below but we'd love to see you there to catch up with some festive fun!

Hannah West and Lucy Wray
Co-Chairs of the Defence Research Network

See the full newsletter here: Life after a PhD

Visit the Newsletter Catalogue to catch up on all our past issues!