RED Program Launch 2025

Photo from Albury Wodonga Birders (K. Schultz)

Hello there!

Welcome to the Research Education and Development (RED) Program for 2025. Our first semester offerings are now live on the RED Program webpage. If you’re new here, let us talk you through some preliminaries. If you’re already an old friend of the RED Program, scroll down to check out our updates for this year.

I’ve recently enrolled in a graduate research degree. What do I need to know about the RED Program?

The RED Program helps you make the most out of your time as a graduate researcher - whether that’s through honing your skills, coaching you to do your best, finding your way if you feel a bit lost, planning your next steps, or getting connected. Participating in RED activities, workshops, and events lets you find your researcher community at La Trobe, improve your experience, and stay focused.

The Research Education and Development (RED) Team, based in the Graduate Research School (GRS), curates the RED Program – workshops, seminars, and ongoing initiatives to support the development of researchers across all disciplines within the University. The RED Program includes a range of activities around different themes that support researcher development, including: research skills, academic writing and publication, research communication, career planning and development, managing supervision, research funding, engagement and impact. To better understand what’s on offer and how it can help you, scroll through our brochure (requires La Trobe login for SharePoint).

Our Program incorporates offerings from academic members of the RED Team (hopefully you’ll get to know us as you progress through your candidature) as well as wonderful colleagues from across the University and trusted external providers. There are more than 100 workshops and seminars on offer each semester, so it pays to spend some time planning what you want to attend and when.

What are workshops like and how do I sign up?

The offerings in the RED Program range from drop-in sessions, to technical training, and development activities. Most of these are offered online, via Zoom, to best accommodate researchers across a vareity of locations. The easiest way for you to get a sense of what’s available is to read the blurbs on the Eventbrite pages for sessions that seem most relevant to you. You should also sign up for the Graduate Research Scholar newsletter which often highlights important upcoming sessions.

Plenty of workshops in the RED Program are designed specifically for graduate researchers and, if you’ve recently enrolled, we should be seeing you at an Orientation session, soon! In 2025, new candidates are automatically included in some of our foundational workshops, so that you can start out right and get a feel for how workshops run. Signing up for other offerings is easy, just follow the “Register” link next to the session you want to attend on the RED Program webpage and follow the prompts via Eventbrite. Top tip: remember to register with a University / institutional email.

For workshops run by the RED Team, we emphasise participation and peer-sharing. The time we spend with you is providing structure and space for you to do the work of developing as a researcher. Our workshops are not so much about telling you what to do as giving you context and tools to figure out what you need to do and what works best for you. These workshops are also a vital opportunity for you to meet other graduate researchers, reflect, and ask questions in a supportive environment.

What’s new in 2025?

Even if everything above sounds very familiar, we’re always tweaking and updating RED Program content and delivery, based on participant feedback. So, you might like to know about new workshops like Feedback on Writing or How to be a Good Researcher and the return of refreshed workshops like Social Media for Researchers.

Another new addition for this year is a mid-year writing intensive for first year graduate researchers. If you want to set up good writing habits and smooth your path through to completion, this is for you. The intensive will run from 29 - 31 July, with details to follow (and don’t worry our famed end-of-year, open-to-all RED writing retreat will be returning in the last week of November – block it out it in your calendars!)

You might also like to know about a few things that will be shaped a slightly differently for 2025. We’ve heard a lot in the last couple of years about how folks miss the togetherness of Shut Up and Write (SUAW) as it existed in the before times, so we’re highlighting our RED-facilitated sessions on Thursday mornings (9:30am - 12 noon, Melbourne time) as an anchor point for SUAW across La Trobe. If you want to join in, or find out more, sign up for our weekly SUAW reminders by emailing: red.grs@latrobe.edu.au with SUAW sign up in the subject line.

Milestone day is coming your way, too! Clear your calendars because our three, core milestone workshops (for Confirmation, Mid-Candidature and Pre-Submission) are now scheduled together, in April. Simply register for the session that aligns with where you’re at in your candidature. You’ll also be able to follow up with the Understanding Examination workshop, running the following week.

Last but most definitely not least, if you’ve got any questions related to the RED Program you can pop into one of our shiny new RED drop-in sessions to talk it through. They’ll be running on Zoom from 1-2pm, Melbourne time, on the last Friday of each month.

We look forward to seeing you at RED things, soon!