Careers, education & training (SoAR)
Southampton Academy of Research (SoAR) is a career support service for our medical and health researchers.
We provide career advice, events and training for Southampton students and staff looking to develop their career in research, and can direct you to career development opportunities relevant to your career path.
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If you would like more information on how you can develop your research career and the opportunities available to you, please email soar@uhs.nhs.uk, call 023 8120 6922 or sign up to our mailing list.
Training leads
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Prof Alison Richardson: executive director for SoAR
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Kay Mitchell: associate director for SoAR and academic career development lead for NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre (cross-cutting themes; Data Science, Microbial Science and Behavioural Science) and other healthcare professionals)
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Dr Mark Johnson: academic career development lead for NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre. (Nutrition theme)
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Professor Karl Staples, academic career development lead for NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research centre. (Respiratory & Critical Care theme)
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Dr Kristin Veighey: associate director and training lead for medical clinical research fellows and clinical research physician
Career pathways
Support services
Find out about the support services and regular training courses available to help you progress to the next stage in your research career, as well as mandatory training for clinical trials.
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NIHR support services
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NIHR Research Design Service South Central (RDS-SC): Free advice on how to design and set up a study. Sign up to their weekly e-bulletin to hear about the latest NIHR funding calls and other opportunities.
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NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN) Wessex: Provide a Study Support Service to help you plan, set up and deliver your research. Also offer financial support services and training and development opportunities.
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NIHR Clinical Research Network Health Services Research Toolkit: Ideas, guidance and support to help you deliver high quality research.
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NIHR Academic Training Advocates: Ambassadors for clinical research that can provide advice for aspiring and early career researchers.
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Become a rate or expert commentator: The NIHR dissemination centre offers opportunities to extend your critical appraisal skills and promote research dissemination activities.
Health Services Library
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Everyone who works for University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust can join the Health Services Library at Southampton General Hospital.
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The library provides you with access to books and journals, DVDs and CD-ROMs, computers with web access, photocopying facilities, training and support in finding and using information, space to study or work, and help to access and use NICE Evidence.
Good Clinical Practice (GCP) training
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Clinical trial research teams need to have completed GCP training (online or face-to-face). This must be updated at least every three years, or every two years for commercially sponsored research, by attending refresher courses. See dates of upcoming courses and register to attend via CRN Wessex.
NHS approvals training
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UHS R&D department runs a 1.5 hour session on what points to consider when obtaining R&D approval and the next steps afterwards. We highly recommend this session to those new to research or those coordinating research projects.
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The session provides a brief overview on: sponsor approval; NRES, REC or University Ethics; using the IRAS form; CSP route and NIHR portfolio; Research Passports, Letters of Access or Honorary Research Contracts; use of EDGE database; SAE reporting; annual reports; Trust Incident reporting.
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This is an excellent opportunity to ask the R&D experts for their guidance.
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If you are interested, please email Sharon.Davies-Dear@uhs.nhs.uk and she will add your name to the booking list. An email will be sent out as soon as dates and locations are confirmed. We usually run this session 2-3 times per year, places are limited to 20.
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Endnote training
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The University of Southampton provides online training to help you use EndNote to manage your references and citations.
Early Career Researcher Champions
Our early career researcher champions are all current researchers in Southampton. They come from a wide range of healthcare professions and offer support and advice. Please email us at soar@uhs.nhs.uk for more information.
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Mentors
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SoAR recognises the importance of mentoring for all researchers. If you are keen to find a mentor, or wish to mentor others, please see the University of Southampton mentoring programme for an example of one mentorship scheme.