Intellectual Leadership:
Creating a Research Agenda

 

What's next for you in your research? Becoming an intellectual leader in your field entails conceptualizing your long term research contribution and locating your work in relation to other disciplines.

This two-session workshop is designed to help you articulate an independent research agenda for the future. The first session focuses on how your future research projects relate to your dissertation, and how your proposed research agenda fits with new directions in your field. We also discuss the type of setting in which you hope to work-- in academia, the private sector, government, in the US or abroad-- and ways to tailor your agenda to fit that setting.

Participants write a one-page non-technical statement of their research agenda between the first and second session. All of the students and the workshop leader read all the agendas for the second session, in which everyone provides constructive feedback on each participant’s statement.

The workshop is helpful as you define your own post dissertation research, and prepare job letters and grant applications. Light meals will be provided at each of the sessions.

These workshops will be led by Dr. Margo Horn, a US social historian specializing in women's history and the history of medicine. Dr. Horn teaches in Stanford's History Department.

Summer 2012

The clusters for Summer 2012 are:

• Natural Science
  Workshops on July 25 and August 1, each from 5 - 7 p.m. This new workshop is designed for students in the Natural Sciences who wish to write a statement of their research agenda for a non-specialist audience. The workshop will provide an opportunity to think about your long term, independent research agenda in light of the types of settings in which you hope to work in the future.
• Engineering
  Workshops on July 26 and August 2, each from 12 - 2 p.m.
  

To Sign up for a Workshop Series

Participants must register in advance, and attendance at BOTH of the workshops is required. To register, send an email to Margo Horn ([email protected]), and include:

• your name
• year in program
• dissertation topic
• contact information.

Participants will receive workshop information, including locations, by return email.

What Students Are Saying...

“The best part of the workshop was the time spent discussing our personal research agendas. This was helpful because it’s rare that we have time to have others provide a fresh perspective on something we are so immersed in.”

“The workshop was a professionalization opportunity and provided a friendly but constructively critical venue for me to prepare and present my research agenda.”

“This workshop was a perfect introduction to strategies for positioning yourself to get the next job or fellowship that you want through your writing… I was pretty intimidated at the start by the whole idea of writing for "after graduate school," but this workshop eased a lot of my anxiety.”