A pioneering partnership of London universities is transforming doctoral training through shared resources and a streamlined digital platform.
For over a hundred years, Bloomsbury has been synonymous with intellectual exchange. Its streets have hosted formal and informal networks of scholars, shaping ideas that resonate far beyond London. Today, that spirit of collaboration lives on in the Bloomsbury Postgraduate Skills Network (BPSN), a consortium of leading universities committed to enhancing research skills for doctoral students.
BPSN was founded by University College London to share best practice in skills training for doctoral researchers. By sharing events and opportunities across the network, participating administrators and researcher developers aim to maximise training opportunities for researchers at partner institutions. Both broadly applicable as well as partner-specific sessions that complement the training programmes of other partners are offered, helping to fill otherwise unused training places and making provision more efficient overall. As an important side-effect of this, they have cultivated fertile ground for interdisciplinary engagement between participants, bringing together researchers who might otherwise never meet.
The coordination challenge
The network has faced some day-to-day logistical hurdles, however: organising an event series across diverse partners with diverse systems is labour-intensive. Spanning ten institutions, BPSN’s wide scope made it tough to ensure that researchers could discover and access opportunities consistently and equitably. The resulting combination of email chains and spreadsheets allowed BPSN to function, but with imperfect visibility for researchers and limited data and impact tracking. While all agreed BPSN was a great idea, in practice, providing a coordinated offering required a lot of ‘above and beyond’ additional administrative legwork for the partners running the network.
Streamlining with technology
Enter Inkpath, a platform designed to simplify skills development. For BPSN, Inkpath delivered a dedicated web portal, using BPSN’s newly-refreshed brand identity. Administrators could work together on one platform to coordinate shared events, while students could visit a single web portal and app to discover activities and book places. By simplifying the process, Inkpath reduced administration overhead and allowed BPSN to present a clear, consistent offering which boosted engagement.
But there was also an unexpected benefit: with less time spent on logistics, administrators from each university were able to collaborate more closely, sharing best practice and enhancing the researcher experience even further.
Collaboration Made Scalable
With Inkpath’s reporting tools now being rolled out for the network, BPSN will soon have robust insights into engagement and impact. The platform also helps to make the collaboration model scalable, enabling new institutions to join with ease. In future this approach could serve as a blueprint for other collaborative training networks across the UK and beyond. For now, BPSN is looking forward to a bright future as a thriving network, the latest in the long tradition of the Bloomsbury area.
Voices from the Network
Dr Amy Hong, Head of Academic and Researcher Experience at UCL, and Dr Heike Miess, BPSN Lead at UCL
“Having a dedicated learning management system across the ten BPSN partners, together with a visual brand refresh infused the network with a new identity. The BPSN-Inkpath platform provides the partners with administrative autonomy and flexibility resulting in a feeling of shared ownership of the governance of the network.”
Melanie Crisfield, Researcher Development Advisor, Queen Mary University London
“Working with Inkpath as part of BPSN has allowed us to increase participation in our sessions easily and conveniently. The administrative process of setting up events on Inkpath is simple and straightforward and lets PGRs from partner institutions access our training. This year, we’ve noticed a good uptake from PGRs at partner institutions and a number of our PGRs have identified that they’re attending BPSN training. Inkpath’s external calendar function makes it easy for us, as facilitators, to identify upcoming training and promote that to our own PGRs, which further enhances their experience by providing them with training they may otherwise not have been able to access. I love how easy Inkpath makes everything, for both admins and users.”
Dr Ben Webster, Doctoral Student Development Officer, King’s College London
“We are delighted with the new Inkpath platform for BPSN. It has given us a professional looking and easy-to-use platform to manage events and bookings from, in turn making our shared training events more accessible to postgraduate students across our partner institutions. This firm administrative foundation gives us more time and freedom to explore other ways we can collaborate and innovate through the network so that we can better serve and support postgraduate students across the Bloomsbury area.”
Liam McKittrick, Client Success Manager at Inkpath:
“Working with BPSN has shown the power of collaboration across universities. By tailoring Inkpath for multi-institution delivery, we’ve created a scalable model that simplifies training access and strengthens networks for both researchers and administrators.”
Key Results at a glance
Shared training opportunities across multiple universities.
Reduced admin burden and improved efficiency.
Enhanced student experience with easy booking and tracking.
Data-driven insights for future planning.
About the Bloomsbury Postgraduate Skills Network
BPSN is a partnership of leading London-based universities dedicated to providing doctoral researchers with world-class skills training. By pooling resources and expertise, the network offers a diverse range of courses and fosters interdisciplinary collaboration.
Find out more
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