Monday 04-08-2025 - 10:14

The 10th Year of the Doctoral Training Alliance

In higher education, summer offers a valuable opportunity for reflection and forward planning. With the DTA training programme having delivered its final core in-person event, DTA Summer School, for the 2024–25 academic year, we are now using this time not only to design the next year’s training programme, but also to reflect on what worked well, and where we can make meaningful improvements. In light of this reflection, we have already outlined our plans for 2025–26 and are now actively securing dates, venues, training providers, and facilitators to deliver an enhanced training programme for doctoral researchers across the University Alliance membership.

Reflecting on last year’s training programme brings a sense of contentment in all that we have achieved, particularly in engaging DTA researchers to co-deliver the training on numerous occasions, and in providing valuable training opportunities to all PhD researchers from across the DTA membership. We were also fortunate to come together in person on several occasions to celebrate the work and contributions of the DTA community. Below is a recap of the year’s highlights.

University Alliance Annual Awards 2024

The 2024–25 academic year began with a celebration of our MSCA COFUND DTA3 fellows at the University Alliance Annual Awards, held at the University of West London in September. As the DTA3 programme approaches its conclusion in November 2024, we took this opportunity to showcase its impact and to acknowledge the tremendous effort and dedication of everyone involved in making the project such a success. Watch our video to learn more.

DTA Autumn Connect 2024
During the autumn, we also welcomed our newest and final cohort of DTA Future Societies doctoral researchers, marked by an in-person event, Autumn Connect, held at the Wellcome Collection in London. These gatherings offer new and current researchers the chance to build meaningful connections, share experiences, and engage with peers from across the DTA university network—a distinctive opportunity for PGRs who are part of the DTA cohort. Two of the attendees from Teesside University, Shehani Pigera and Roopsa Ghosh, shared their reflections on our blog site in a blogpost ‘Finding Confidence and Community’ through their experience at the event.

StoryLab Placement
In November, a select number of DTA researchers came together for a unique opportunity made possible by colleagues at Anglia Ruskin University’s StoryLab Research Institute. Building on a live session they delivered at our Summer School earlier in the year, the StoryLab team offered a three-day placement to help these researchers explore the art of podcasting as a tool for research dissemination. Read about their experience here. 

The Spring term saw two occasions to get together and celebrate, the first was at the Houses of Parliament and the second at Missenden Abbey – both key highlights of the year but for very different reasons. 

UA Parliamentary Event
In March, UA hosted a parliamentary event showcasing the role of UA members across four themes: opportunity, community and civic impact, innovation and growth and skills. As part of the programme, the DTA secured a presentation slot for one of our researchers – Jake Milner, Teesside University – who delivered a wonderful speech reflecting on his experiences as a PhD student Teesside as part of the DTA programme. He argued that such opportunities should ‘lie at the heart of reducing spatial inequalities particularly in so called ‘left behind’ regions’. This was a very proud moment for the programme. Jake’s full speech can be read here. 

DTA Residential Writing Retreat 2025
In April, Rabia hosted a group of DTA researchers at Missenden Abbey for a 3-day annual residential writing retreat, which proves to be the most popular in-person event in our calendar. Alongside UA colleagues Katharine D’Souza (University Alliance) and Helen Frisby (UWE), the team delivered a supportive programme of writing, reflection, advice, and restorative downtime. This year, Helen and Rabia introduced a reflective exercise on the final day where attendees were invited to write a letter to their everyday self, offering encouragement for moments when writing feels difficult. These letters were posted to participants six weeks after the retreat, and extracts can be read on our blog site.

Sadly, this was our final retreat at Missenden Abbey, which is closing later this year. As part of our summer planning, we’ve been searching for a new venue that can match the warmth and inspiration Missenden has provided.

DTA Summer School 2025
Our final in-person event of the year—the annual Summer School—was hosted by the University of Derby this July, with the theme Influence and Leadership. Each session explored aspects of research impact and influence, aiming to plant a seed of thought in our researchers’ minds. Details of the event are available in this blog post. As with all our Summer Schools, we make the most of the location we are in and used both the university campus and the city’s Museum of Making to run our sessions. Our closing session on ‘Quiet Leadership’ was delivered by Dr Andrew Rawnsley, Teesside University, exploring the connection between creativity and leadership and how creative thinking can shape one’s ability to influence others. A very fitting end to our year. 

DTA Online Electives Programme
In addition to all these in-person events, the DTA ran its annual programme of online development and engagement activities ranging from the weekly Power Hour Writing sessions to sessions on creating thinking in research, finding a mentor and mind-mapping to name a few; and throughout June, all activities had a careers and employability focus aimed at our current and alumni communities. In 2024-25  55 sessions were delivered, attended by c600 doctoral researchers from across the network. For the upcoming academic year, we plan to extend all our online sessions to any doctoral researcher based at a UA member institution, which will not only provide additional opportunities for the researchers but will support resource sharing across members as well as a platform for researchers across the member universities to be part of a PGR community. 

A Decade of DTA
This October marks ten years since the Doctoral Training Alliance (DTA) was established. As we look ahead, our hope is to continue evolving and supporting our members’ doctoral communities for another decade, adapting to whatever format best meets their needs. The 2025–26 academic year promises to be one of exploration and development. But for now, it’s worth pausing to reflect on what a successful year 2024–25 has been. Resources were thoughtfully utilised to deliver a rich and impactful training programme, made possible by all those who support, shape, deliver, and participate in it. There are too many contributors to name, but hopefully you know who you are - Thank you