The PGR Peer Mentoring Scheme has been set up to provide the opportunity for new researchers at Royal Holloway to benefit from informal peer-to-peer support from researchers in the later stages of their research degree.
How to apply
All new postgraduate researchers and those who are entering their second year in September 2023 can apply for a mentor. If you would like a mentor, please email Laura.Christie@rhul.ac.uk with a brief description of your research interest. We aim to assign you a mentor at the beginning of the autumn term.
PGR peer mentors are expected to provide mentees with advice on community and developmental aspects of PGR study.
You will have the freedom to focus on any aspect of your academic and professional life including, but not limited to, your current role as a student, your future career aspirations, work/life balance, working successfully with your supervisor, demands of personal/work life, teaching demands, and research.
By meeting with your PGR peer mentor and the other researchers they are mentoring, you will also have the opportunity to build a support network with other new researchers.
Your PGR peer mentor will have completed training in order to prepare for the role and you can expect them:
- to be proactive in contacting you and providing you with support
- to listen actively with interest, holding the focus on your agenda
- to take appropriate approaches to help empower you to achieve your goals and to sufficiently convey a sense of belonging to the PGR community
- to help you become aware of the College services that can support you e.g. Wellbeing, Careers, Researcher Development Programme etc.
- to take an interest in your progress
- to display discretion.
We want you to get the most of this mentor / mentee relationship so it is worth bearing in mind a few things to avoid.
- Don't bring to your first meeting a long shopping list of things you want the mentor to do for you
- Don't expect your mentor to be available for you whenever you want them
- Don't treat your mentoring sessions as the easiest item in the diary to move at the last minute
- Don't leave it up to your mentor to decide what to talk about; the more input you have into the conversation, the more you will get out of it
- Don't expect your mentor to always have the answer. It may be more appropriate that they signpost you instead to someone in the College with more expertise in a particular area.
- Don't blame your mentor if ever their advice doesn’t work out
You will be matched with your PGR peer mentor during the start of term. Once you have been matched, your PGR peer mentor will get in contact to arrange the first meeting.
It is expected that many of you will decide with your PGR peer mentor to meet online via MS Teams - although there is nothing to stop you meeting them face-to-face if agreed.
The PGR peer mentors may be allocated more than one mentee each so they may hold their mentor sessions with all their mentees in a small group. This has the added benefit of helping you to get to know other new researchers and expanding your support network. If you would prefer to have a one-to-one meeting instead, just let your mentor know.
It is expected that the mentoring will last for at least two terms and can be longer if you both agree.
Yes - we want our Masters by Research students to have the same opportunity to get support from a current researcher and to feel part of Royal Holloway's PGR community. It is to be noted however that all our PGR peer mentors are PhD students, so they will not have specific knowledge of your Masters programme.