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The PGR Roadmap

The PGR Roadmap helps you to navigate your way through your doctorate at Queen Mary.
Access the Development Needs Analysis

The PGR Roadmap helps guide you through your doctorate at Queen Mary.

The PGR Roadmap has been created to support you through your doctorate. You should be able to identify where you are in your doctorate using this graphic, and what your next steps will be. 

This Roadmap graphic is best used in combination with the Development Needs Analysis, and the help of your supervisor, to help you progress through your doctorate. 

PGR Roadmap graphic [PDF 1,614KB]

The roadmap is divided into four stages:

  1. Early stage
  2. Middle stage
  3. Late stage
  4. Writing up stage

For each stage, on QMPlus you will find details about Queen Mary requirements, links to internal pages explaining these requirements in more detail, and helpful information from various sources, including Vitae. To access the Vitae pages, you will need to create a free account using your QMUL email address. This will give you access to all of Vitae’s many resources to support your development as a researcher.

We recommend the following resources for all PGRs, regardless of your stage:

 

The early stage of your doctorate is like the start of any journey: new, exciting, and with lots of possible directions. You aren’t expected to know everything about your research project or the research process yet – remember, you’re just starting out! You didn’t begin your undergraduate or master’s programme fully aware of what to do, how, and when, and no one expects you to have all of the answers at the beginning of your doctorate.

You can read more about starting a doctorate, the key skills and concepts you need to be thinking about in the early stages, a routemap for new researchers, and much more on our Roadmap QMPlus page.

The middle stage of your doctorate is an interesting time for many PGRs. At this stage, you are gaining much more independence as a researcher and taking more of a lead in your research compared to the early stage.

You can read more about what you should be doing at this stage, how to stay the course, career development, and much more on our Roadmap QMPlus page.

The late stage of your doctorate is when you fully come into your own as an expert in your field and in your topic. You will still be actively conducting research, and you will have a much clearer idea of the ways in which your findings answer your research questions.

You can read more about communicating your research more widely, preparing for your viva, raising your profile, and much more on our Roadmap QMPlus page.

The writing up stage means you’re coming to the end of your doctorate – this can be both an exciting and challenging time. Make sure you plan for the end of your doctorate to help you get through this stage as smoothly as possible.

You can find out more about transferring to writing up status, writing your thesis, the viva process, and much more on our Roadmap QMPlus page.

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