Postgraduate Renewal Programme

The Renewal Programme is ambitious in its intent on delivering a roadmap that enables Trinity to provide a world-class experience, delivering highly skilled, highly employable independent graduates, equipped to tackle the challenges of the coming decades, underpinned by a supportive and nurturing environment that enables them to fulfil their potential and be impactful global citizens. 

Since June 2021, the Postgraduate Renewal Programme has been working collaboratively across the College community with students and staff (academic and professional) to achieve its ambitions. 

Accomplishment Report

The report provides a consolidated overview of the Programme’s key achievements, outcomes, and impact since its inception in June 2022, and outlines how its deliverables now position Trinity to advance the postgraduate education related priorities of Thrive, the College Strategy 2025–30.  

Accomplishment Report

Update from the Dean of Graduate Studies

The PG Renewal Programme has now completed four years of activity and completed two Horizons of work. We presented our Accomplishments Report to Council on March 11th, 2026. Given the scale of the ambition for change in our postgraduate activities, we broke our work plan down into three horizons. Horizon 1 focused on Clarifying and Simplifying some of our core activities (see our You Said, We Did page). Some highlights included the launch of the Trinity Research Doctorate Awards, and Trinity’s first Supervisor - Research Student Agreement.  

 
In Horizon 2 our aim was to Enhance our processes and activities to enhance the student and staff experience and to deliver on our vision of offering a 'stimulating, inclusive and sustainable environment where curious minds and creative thinkers thrive'. Enhancing processes and activities takes time, as we worked to understand the relevant issues, plan for effective change, and implement and review any changes introduced. We devised a Way of Working to help guide us. We developed a Trinity Blueprint for a Triple I postgraduate education, to ensure every postgraduate student has an opportunity to engage with Interdisciplinary, Intersectoral and International experiences. We will continue to field-test many ideas and initiatives from Horizon 1 and Horizon 2, and we will be reaching out to staff and students for your feedback. We're also open to hearing from you at any time. Share your ideas, your pet irritations, and your great experiences. We want to ensure that the changes we have made so far do not disrupt things that are working well and delivering for everyone.  

The past few years have been exciting in the postgraduate space. One of the most important learnings from the PG Renewal Programme has been the importance of sharing our expertise, finding common ground and developing shared goals to support everyone within the postgraduate community. Work continues on some of the systems and processes to support PGR progression and we look forward to the new opportunities that the Digital Transformation Strategy will open up, enabling us to forge ahead with Horizon 3, aiming for a truly transformative shift in how we work. Regardless of the digital infrastructure development that we see on the horizon, we recognise that ultimately it is the power of the collective wisdom of the university that drives and sustains change. 

Ní neart go cur le chéile – Our strength comes from working together. 

My sincere thanks as Dean of Graduate Studies for the extraordinary energy and generosity of everyone – staff and students – over the past years. 

Míle buíochas ó chroí

Professor Martine Smith
Dean of Graduate Studies

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For any Postgraduate Renewal Programme related queries, please contact us at pgrenewal@tcd.ie.

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