About Prosper
Developed through four years of collaboration and co-creation with employers, Higher Education Institutions, Principal Investigators, and postdocs themselves. Learn more about the development of Prosper from our Prosper blog.
Prosper is tried and tested. From 2021-23 we piloted a range of development interventions and approaches, working with over 120 postdocs across two pilot cohorts, drawn from across the University of Liverpool, University of Manchester and Lancaster University – evaluating their impact along the way. Our cohorts were carefully selected to meet the principles of EDI, and reflect the diversity of the UK postdoc community in terms of gender, ethnicity, and disciplinary area.
Collaboration with employers, Principal Investigators, the UK HE sector and research funders ensures that Prosper is fit for purpose and adaptable to the diverse needs of the UK postdoc community.
Employers
We’ve worked closely with over 100 employer partners to shape and inform our resources, and ensure Prosper’s relevance to the opportunities and demands of the wider economic landscape.
Principal Investigators
Through our PI Network and related activities, we have developed resources to equip them with the tools they need to optimise their own support of the postdocs they manage.
Higher Education Institutions
Prosper is adaptable to the diverse needs of the UK postdoc community and can be flexed to meet local needs and resources. If you’re keen to get your organisation involved, do get in touch.
'It’s great to see just how far Prosper has come since its inception. All the co-creation, testing and refining has culminated in a genuinely unique offering in the postdoc career development space – a rich and comprehensive set of resources designed by postdocs for postdocs, crafted in close collaboration with our partner institutions, the wider sector, employers, and of course postdocs themselves.'
Professor Anthony Hollander, PVC for Research & Impact, University of Liverpool
This portal draws together all of the outputs from our two pilot cohorts, alongside our work with employers and Principal Investigators.
In addition to resources for postdocs and Principal Investigators, our portal includes additional materials and guidance for Higher Education Institutions (HEI), designed to enable organisations to use Prosper in a flexible way, according to their varying needs and internal resources.
'What Prosper has built […] is very impressive, and the impact it has had on postdoctoral researchers in its pilot phase is extremely promising. I believe Prosper can play a leading role in driving best practice in developing postdoctoral research careers and strongly encourage research institutions across the UK to adopt and make use of Prosper resources'
Professor Dame Jessica Corner
Executive Chair, Research England
Prosper was developed by the University of Liverpool, working alongside our partners at the University of Manchester and Lancaster University, and is funded by the Research England development fund.
The Prosper Journey
Prosper was launched in October 2019. In June 2020, we launched our initial set of development resources via a prototype Prosper portal. These resources were organised around the three key themes of “Reflect”, “Explore” and “Act” and included a suite of curated self-reflection and diagnostic tools, case studies from former postdocs, PIs and employers and resources which supported postdocs to identify their skills and to showcase these to a range of employers.
Slide 1: Prosper. Unlocking postdoc career potential
Slide 2: Prosper is an innovative, holistic model for postdoc career development
Slide 3: Designed for postdocs’ career development needs, Prosper…
Slide 4: Provides the tools, resources and space to further postdocs’ professional development
Slide 5: Enables postdocs to thrive across multiple career pathways
Slide 6: Unlocks the huge postdoc talent pool
Slide 7: Empowers Managers of Researchers to boost their postdocs’ career development
Slide 8: Provides institutions with a flexible and free approach to: developer their postdocs; meet their Researcher Development Concordat obligations, enhance their research culture
Slide 9: Prosper is freely available to Postdocs, Managers of Researchers, Higher Education and Research institutions across the UK
Slide 10: Prosper. Co-created with: postdocs, managers of researchers, the wider sector, employers.
Slide 11: Postdocs
Slide 12: Postdocs should help shape their own career development
Slide 13: Developed with 120+ postdocs that represent diversity across…
Slide 14: gender, ethnicity, and discipline
Slide 15: Managers of Researchers
Slide 16: No-one is better placed to create a positive culture and value career development
Slide 17: Content that is informed by: subject matter experts. PIs and Managers of Researchers, via the PI Network
Slide 18: Employers. Providing guidance on opportunities beyond academia
Slide 19: Insight from 100+ employers, large and small
Slide 20: Developer in close collaboration with the wider sector
Slide 21: to ensure it meets the needs of institutions
Slide 22: Piloted across University of Liverpool, The University of Manchester, Lancaster University
Slide 23: What Prosper offers for… Postdocs, Managers of Researcher, Institutions
Slide 24: Reflect. Tools and resources for figuring our what’s most important for your career.
Slide 25: What skills do I need? What are my strengths and priorities? What do I want from my career? What skills do I have? What are my goals and values?
Slide 26: Explore. Learn about opportunities and options open to postdocs
Slide 27: Content and insight from 100+ employers…
Slide 28: whether within academia or beyond. Academia, industry, government, academia-adjacent, policy, start a business, large multination, NGOs, charities, museums, SME, commerce
Slide 29: from sectors across 12 career clusters. Advance manufacturing and materials, creative and cultural industries, environment and energy, food and agriculture, government and non-profit, ICT and digital technology, health and care, higher education and publications, life sciences and pharmaceuticals, transport systems, environment and energy (sic: financial, business and professional services), start-ups and entrepreneurship
Slide 30: resources to enable you to survey your options, map your skills, and figure our your direction of travel.
Slide 31: Act. Practical resources to empower you to get where you’re going
Slide 32: Interview preparation, commercial communication, starting up your business, networking, advance CV creation and tailoring
Slide 33: Skills for your whole career, wherever it takes you.
Slide 34: Managers of Researchers
Slide 35: Resources to empower you to support your researchers’ career development
Slide 36: To create an open and diverse working environment
Slide 37: and get the most from your researchers
Slide 38: An ideal starting point for using the minimum annual 10 professional development days in the Researcher Development Concordat
Slide 39: Institutions
Slide 40: Guidance and material to use Prosper within your own organisation
Slide 41: A framework for driving best practice research culture built on Equality, Diversity, Inclusion
Slide 42: Flexible. Modular. Free.
Slide 43: Whatever your needs or budget. Prosper is designed to enhance your postdoc development offering. Whether running a full cohort, or simply filling a specific gap
Slide 44: Resources on: overcoming fear of failure, networking tips and tricks, intercultural communication, how to start a business, guides to government and policy roles, how to showcase your skills, transitioning to a new role, and much more…
Slide 45: Prosper is tried and tested
Slide 46: Our evaluation of our pilot cohort showed: improvements in confidence levels, increased awareness of career options beyond academia, increase in professional networking, many participants made the leap beyond academia
Slide 47: “Across almost every area of professional development, Prosper was transformative for me.”
Slide 48: “Prosper helped me get our of my comfort zone and make a clear decision about my next career move.”
Slide 49: “I felt very supported by Prosper – it was like I was building myself up again from scratch.”
Slide 50: Prosper has guaranteed support for a minimum of 10 years
Slide 51: Visit our portal and explore our resources. prosper.liverpool.ac.uk
Slide 52: Or get in touch with the Prosper team. prosper.liverpool.ac.uk
Email: prosper.postdoc@liverpool.ac.uk
Twitter: @ProsperPostdoc
LinkedIn: /company/prosperproject
Slide 53: Prosper is based in The Academy, at the University of Liverpool, in partnership with Lancaster University and the University of Manchester. Prosper is funded by Research England.
liverpool.ac.uk/researcher/prosper/
Slide 54: Prosper. Unlocking postdoc career potential
liverpool.ac.uk/researcher/prosper/
In March 2021, following an extensive recruitment and selection process, 53 University of Liverpool postdocs joined the first year-long Prosper Pilot. Participants gained access to a range of additional resources and initiatives, including individual and group coaching, commissioned development interventions across the key themes of “leadership”, “creativity” and “communication” and insights into the broad range of career opportunities beyond academia curated around a set of “career clusters”.
Read more about the experiences of our first cohort in the evaluation report and in this brochure with testimonials from our postdocs.
In February 2022, Prosper went multi-institutional. We launched the second Prosper pilot, comprising 75 postdocs from the Universities of Liverpool, Manchester and Lancaster. During the first few months the Prosper team also crunched the numbers and feedback from our first pilot, in order to produce a comprehensive and rigorous evaluation of its impact.
The lessons learned from our first pilot played a critical role in shaping the contents and resources on offer in our second – it is over the course of this second pilot that our national public offering took its current shape. The second pilot came to a successful close in February 2023.
You can gain an insight into our second cohort in this brochure and our second evaluation report.
In the first half of 2023 our time was spent evaluating the impact of our second pilot cohort, working with several HEI partners to support early use of Prosper and drawing together all of our learning and feedback to create the new Prosper portal with web design agency Feel Created.
The Prosper portal went live in summer 2023, accessible to all and full of easily-searchable content and resources, drawing on all of our work from our pilots, our employer engagement, work with PIs, and the wider sector.
Based on the success achieved between 2019 – 2023, the Prosper project team at the University of Liverpool secured further funding to 'roll-out' Prosper for use at higher education and research institutions throughout the UK. A key aspect of this stage of the project is to continue with the ethos of co-creation and collaboration. To that end, in October 2023, we opened up the PI Network to other HEIs: this is a series of events for managers of researchers to feel empowered to support postdocs in the development of their careers by learning from partners at a cross institutional level.
Fast forward to January 2025, and evidence of the benefit of the roll-out could be seen in the launch of Prosper cohorts at nine institutions, a practice sharing event in February 2025 attended by representatives from 50+HEIs.
The aim now is to establish a way to maintain the positive impact of Prosper resources upon delivery of postdoc career development.
We are always looking to improve the Prosper approach in order to be as useful as possible to our audiences. If you would like to get involved or have feedback for us, please get in touch prosper.postdoc@liverpool.ac.uk
Prosper would not have been possible without the funding, input and contribution of a lot of people. We’d like to take the opportunity to thank them.
To discover more about our pilot cohorts and the Prosper journey watch some of the videos over on our comms toolkit page.
Refine
