Research Incubator Labs: Enhancing Postgraduate Students’ Research Skills and Capacity

Research labs enhance learning skills and postgraduate research experiences, fostering continuing education, research capacity and students’ creativity. Furthermore, research mentoring, supervision and collaboration improve innovation in higher education. This project aims to build research capacity from a largely untapped resource by supporting existing postgraduate students to become research assistants and postgraduate researchers. This project will provide benefits on two aspects, professionally developing supervisors through training delivered to promote best practices and encouraging the development of research skills among future Roehampton graduates, increasing their entry potential into postgraduate research studies. This aligns with the FBL’s commitment to student continuation and CSRM’s aim of developing inclusive research. It also is particularly relevant in the University of Roehampton context, which has a high percentage of BAME students, who are often the first in their families to attend higher education. Faculty members will receive dedicated training to support supervision and mentoring of at least one postgraduate student in a research assistant role. The training and mentoring scheme should enhance students’ progression into research degrees and encourage continuing education through contributing to a conference paper submission, attendance at research workshops and a postgraduate research colloquium, organised by the project participants.