Prosper Practice-Exchange: Collaborating to enhance the career development of postdocs

On 6^th February 2025 Prosper held its first annual Prosper Practice Exchange event at the iconic Kimpton Clock Tower in Manchester.

The Practice Exchange was created to provide an opportunity to showcase the diverse ways in which Prosper is being used by higher education institutions so far, share practice and connect with colleagues. Attendees included staff responsible for researcher development from 39 higher education institutions and senior representatives from sector bodies including the N8 Research Partnership, NCUB, UKRI, the British Academy and Vitae.

The agenda was designed to provide a platform for institutions already using Prosper to share insights into the various ways it is being used to support their postdocs’ career development and the impact it is having to date. These included University of Manchester, Durham University, Heriot-Watt University, University of Southampton, University of Huddersfield and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, to name a few.

Next year’s event will build on this momentum and reflect on progress made with Prosper’s framework for sustaining impact, which is currently in development. Plans are for this to centre on a model of reciprocation (The Reciprocation Framework – Prosper).

The idea behind the Reciprocation Framework is to formalise and encourage mutual exchange between institutions and Prosper. An early example can be seen in how Prosper provided support for the University of Southampton’s Prosper cohort, and in return the University of Southampton developed some Prosper resources for the Portal and hosted a PI Network session, open to managers of researchers across the sector.

We will release details of next year's event as they become available.

In the meantime, you can read a summary of 2024's event and the key themes over at the National Centre for Universities and Business (NCUB) blog space: Prosper holds first Practice Exchange Event sharing use of resources across the UK