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Doctorate Research Support Groups

Undertaking a PhD is exciting and stimulating. However, there are many well-documented challenges facing doctoral students. Staying in touch with other researchers throughout your degree is a way to help address challenges such as isolation, maintaining motivation, lack of feedback and stress. It’s beneficial to share experiences, talk about your research and get support from each other!

We are currently recruiting for 2023.

How Could a Research Support Group Help Me?

  • Discuss challenges and issues of doing a PhD. Family and friends are a great support but sometimes it’s good to talk with someone who is in the same boat. Plus, not everyone has willing family and friends!
  • Space to discuss each other’s research. Sometimes it’s nice to be to talk about it with someone other than your supervisor. Talking can help clarify your ideas and thinking.
  • Someone to talk to about the ups and downs
  • Update on research progress, share ideas, discuss research methods, resources, writing strategies, etc.
  • Stay connected. Especially for students who are studying part-time, distance, etc.
  • Make friends.

How to Find a Group?

Check if there are other students in your school who might be interested or fill in this form and we will try to match you with two or three others who best meet your needs.

Think carefully about what you want from a support group - is it important that you're all in the same discipline? Do you want to be paired with other part-time researchers? It is recommended that students in a group share a similar stage of research. Once the group is matched, we'll check in after two weeks and, if the group isn't a good fit, we can try to match you with different researchers.

Many thanks to the University of Sussex for allowing us to use their Online PhD peer support group resources as a basis for our groups. You can find out more about research groups here: