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Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry

 

The team members who created the café, courtesy University of Cambridge

A new online “café” has been created as a way for PhD students to converse with researchers from across the university.

The Researcher Café fortnightly Zoom is an innovation of the Researcher Development (RD) team, who are responsible for helping Cambridge researchers develop their research skills.

“We created the Researcher Café as an informal and encouraging space to step away from research and meet and speak with fellow researchers in other disciplines,” says Dr Sonja Tomaskovic, who is a Researcher Developer in the area of Physical Sciences and Technology.

Sonja and fellow RD team members Dr Sam Byers, who specialises in Life Sciences and Dr Christian Gilliam, who oversees Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences, introduced the concept of Researcher Cafe. “We wanted to form an online community beyond disciplinary and institutional boundaries, as a way to encourage and sustain the more informal but no less edifying aspects of the research culture in Cambridge,” they say.  

But how does the online café work? “It really runs like a coffee break,” the RD team members explain. “It is informal and people join in when they can -- we are not clock watching or registering who is there. We chat about anything and everything: research, politics, holidays, you name it. For example, one week we talked about Matriculation – how it has happened and what they got in their goody bags. Also they set up chat groups through ‘WhatsApp’ so they could continue talking with each other.”

The online café is open to all PhD students at the University from any Department at any stage of their PhD. “There is no need to book, you can just join in,” says Sonja. PhD students receive an automatic email invitation, and meeting sizes vary: “Sometimes we’ve had meetings with one student, and sometimes with 20.”

“We just feel this is an endeavour that seems particularly important during these unprecedented times,” say the RD team.  “We aren’t really looking for formal feedback as these are informal sessions, but many of the participants have thanked us for setting it up and said they have enjoyed meeting new people.”

The RD team hope to continue the café as a ‘live’ event when it becomes possible. Until then, participants can share research, but must rely on their own cake and coffee!