Vitae

Vitae is the UK organisation championing the personal, professional, and career development of researchers in higher education and research institutes. You can think of them as being the UK equivalent of our own university Researcher Development Team. Vitae are also the implementation body of the Concordat (the document that many universities, including Manchester, signed to support the professional and career development of research staff—see our Concordat section). They make sure universities who have signed up have an implementation plan to ensure that support for researchers, and they give an award to those that do; Manchester currently has this award, and the award is reviewed regularly. There is a lot of useful information for researchers’ development on the Vitae website which is well worth a read. They also manage and promote the very useful Researcher Development Framework (RDF) which we cover on its own page. You can register your email with Vitae to receive their newsletter containing lots of valuable development opportunities and news (an example newsletter you will receive can be found here). There is also a list of useful training and other events they host. They also have Facebook and Twitter accounts you can join.

Navigating the Vitae website

The vitae website (as of November 2012) has two main navbars. The first is associated with the “researchers” tab (see figures below) and the second is associated with the “policy and practice”, “supervisors and managers”, and “employers” tabs. Each button on the navbar leads to the corresponding website section containing lots of links and useful information.

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