Development opportunities
Events, training, and competitions to support your career progression
Completing Higher Degree by Research (HDR) study is a significant undertaking that will enable you to make your mark as a research professional by meaningfully contributing to your field of knowledge.
Thinking about your development throughout your HDR journey can help identify the skills that will best support you while at University and for future opportunities.
The Graduate Research School is here to support you throughout your HDR journey. We'll help you plan for your career and ensure you have a comprehensive skillset to demonstrate to future employers in academia or beyond.
Explore what’s on offer and build the skills that will enable you to collaborate, communicate and make an impact, no matter where your career takes you.
The Graduate Research School has created a HDR Capability Framework that aims to empower you to take ownership of your professional development, ensuring that your research journey is aligned with your academic and career goals.
You can use the framework to facilitate discussions about career aspirations and training needs with your supervisor, and to invite their feedback on the development opportunities that might be useful for you and your future.
The HDR Capability Framework in Action identifies upcoming learning opportunities across the University and beyond, which develop one or multiple capabilities. Explore and register for opportunities that will help you build useful skills and make professional and personal connections.
Participating in competitions is a great way to build your presentation skills so that you can communicate about your research with ease and impact.
The University of Sydney offers a wide range of free HDR-specific training sessions to support you. A variety of in-person sessions and online sessions are available. Use the links below to browse and register for upcoming workshops on the areas you’d like support with.
Need help with critical reading, research writing, thesis proposal, thesis writing or oral presentations? The Learning Hub offers intensive workshops that run over two or three hours, with some running over several weeks. The Learning Hub also offers individual consultations. To get the most out of workshops and consultations, bring examples of your work that you can use in the session.
To see training sessions for HDR students, view the Learning Hub calendar, use ‘Filter results by' and under the Student Cohort filter, select 'HDR Students' and click the 'Apply Filters' button to display upcoming HDR events.
Need help with literature reviews, EndNote or discipline-specific advice on research data publishing? The Library offers a range of HDR workshops to help you.
Explore the Library events calendar and choose to filter by category ‘HDR students’ to see upcoming workshops.
Need help with research data and data software? Sydney Informatics Hub (SIH) runs various workshops to help you. HDR students can also request a consultation for support with their research project.
You can request support in the areas of data science and AI, statistical advice, bioinformatics, or modelling, simulation and visualisation.
Visit the SIH website to register for upcoming workshops.
The Research Ethics team runs training workshops on working with human ethics and animal ethics within a research project.
If you need to improve your understanding of IP commercialisation, browse training workshops provided by IP Australia, Knowledge Commercialisation Australasia (KCA) and Cicada Innovations.
Planning a career in academia? Visit the Researcher Development Hub website to see training sessions that are also open to HDR students. Filter by 'Career stage > HDR students' to see sessions that can help you build your researcher skills. The Researcher Development Hub website also has a suite of resources to help you explore and plan for a career as a researcher.
Your faculty or school may also offer HDR training events specific to your discipline – visit the relevant website below to learn more:
The HDR Development team supports you with the opportunities outlined below.
Have you heard of the Hyde Park speaker’s corner, where anyone can get up talk about what’s important to them? Wish there was something similar for HDR students to share about their research work?
Now there is! Get involved in ‘Present and Connect’ an informal monthly gathering that allows you to practice your presentation skills and bring your research message to a broader audience.
Expand your comfort zone and challenge yourself to translate your research for a general audience who may not be familiar with your discipline and its jargon. If you are an international student, ‘Present and Connect’ is also an opportunity to practice speaking about your research within an Australian context.
Practice your presentation in a small group environment and receive support and feedback from advisors who have been through the HDR student journey and can give you tips on fostering engagement within academic circles. It’s also a good opportunity to practice your 3MT talk.
All HDR students are welcome to come along and join the audience to hear about emerging research and to meet other students. The first event for 2025 will be on 15 May - visit the events page for more details.
If you would like to present your research, or talk about your progress to date, email hdr.development@sydney.edu.au for more information.
Explore where your future career could take you by attending this monthly online event featuring professionals from different walks of life. Whether their careers went exactly as planned, or took an unpredictable turn, there’s a lot to learn from these stories about life after PhD. Among the guests we might have museum curators, University publishing house editors, librarians, researcher developers, statistical consultants, learning advisors, and many more. The first event for 2025 will be on 27 May -the events page for more details.
Design Your Life Workshop Series
Using proven methodologies developed at Stanford University and made popular by the bestselling books Designing Your Life and Designing Your New Work Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, life design has impacted millions of lives around the world.
We are inviting HDR students to navigate life’s ambiguity and design lives and careers full of joy and meaning during a series of three interactive workshops. Launching in June, the workshop series will explore three main themes:
Choose a combination of the workshops that appeal to you most or attend all three. Workshop details >>
Being an HDR student can be a solitary and sometimes isolating experience. We’re here to help you stay connected with your fellow students and researchers across multiple fields. Networking can also help you stay on top of the current research trends and make informed future plans. This is why we encourage you to attend the Wicked Research for Wicked Problems series. These events provide an opportunity to learn about complex, real-world problems and the ways researchers tackle these effectively.
In 2023, the Wicked Research series focused on the State of Environment report and featured a keynote address from Professor Emma Johnston, one of the report’s authors.
In 2024, we explored the importance of multidisciplinary approaches to enhancing sustainability across the world and heard an inspirational keynote address from Professor Greg Fox.
In 2025, we will again zoom in on a wicked problem that challenges the best research minds. Keep an eye out for the announcements on the events page.