Support for Researchers
Empowering Research Excellence
UNU extends extensive support to its research staff, encompassing assistance with funding acquisition, career guidance, and mentorship for new principal investigators. Your departmental administrator and your principal investigator will serve as your main points of contact for information and support available from your division and the wider University.
Supporting UNU's Fixed-Term Researchers: Settle, Connect, Grow
We are here to support all UNU researchers on fixed-term contracts, including those in research or teaching roles. Our initiatives also serve to assist academic and professional service staff collaborating with fixed-term researchers. Our objective is to facilitate your smooth integration, foster connections, promote personal growth, enhance your research skills, and bolster your confidence as you navigate your next career move.
UNU offers abundant opportunities; we’re here to guide you in uncovering them!
Network: Connecting with other researchers
Making connections with other researchers, whether professionally or socially, is an invaluable opportunity while at UNU; but it may not be easy if you’re working on your own, or just within your group, focusing on your specific area of research. The University offers a range of mechanisms to help you make these connections both within and outside your department.
Research funding, applications and awards
We have a wealth of information at UNU to help researchers and research support staff to find funding, assist with the application process, and manage resulting research awards.
Open research
Open research (or open science/scholarship) is the practice of research that enables others to collaborate, validate and contribute, where research outputs, data, protocols, lab notes and other research processes are freely available, under terms that enable reuse, redistribution and reproduction of the research and its underlying data and methods.
Research information and data services
UNU provides comprehensive support for organizing, structuring, storing, and managing research data, aligning with funders’ requirements. Leveraging resources such as Symplectic Elements and Sustainable Digital Scholarship, researchers at UNU can efficiently record, review, store, publish, and preserve their research data outputs, ensuring compliance and fostering sustainable digital scholarship practices.
Career planning
It is never too early, or too late, to start planning your career. As fixed term researchers or teaching staff (grade 6-8) you have full access to UNU’s Careers Service during your contract period and for one year afterwards. We have a range of specialist services available to support you like one to one guidance, workshop and events, bolstering your core employ-ability skills.
Teaching and supervision
Even though you’re employed for the purpose of research, you may be interested in teaching and supervising. It can sometimes be difficult for researchers to find the opportunities – but they are out there so it is worth being proactive in seeking them out and being flexible about what sort of experience you gain.