Academic Enhancement was delighted to host a guest lecture recently by an Australian academic with a growing international reputation.
Dr Inger Mewburn, Director of Research Training at The Australian National University recently delivered a thought-provoking lecture entitled Leveraging Social Media for Academic Career Advantage. Dr Mewburn, who is also well known among the PhD and early career researcher community as the Thesis Whisperer, spoke of the benefits of social media in developing a global profile.
Using social media for profile raising
With over 1 miliion hits on her blog www.thesiswhisperer.com which has been running since 2010, and a very active Twitter account with over 8,000 followers, Dr Mewburn shares her strategies on becoming a more productive researcher and writer. Over 60 staff and research students had the opportunity to hear some of these approaches first-hand at the Heriot-Watt session and to discuss how to start a blog and build up a following to raise the profile of an individual or research group.
Researcher Development
The lecture was offered as part of the Academic Enhancement team's Researcher Development programme which offers development opportunities to early and mid-career researchers at Heriot-Watt. The inclusion of this session was an excellent example of how the programme is constantly evolving to respond to the changing needs of researchers. Further information on the programme can be found at http://www.hw.ac.uk/AEteam/Events.html