4 minutes

Prosper in context

It requires no subscription or use fees
It's been developed specifically for postdocs
It's been developed for postdocs from all disciplines
It's career direction neutral, postdocs don’t have to have a fixed idea of where they’d like their career to go
It's co-created with employers, Principal Investigators (PI) and postdocs

Prosper was funded by Research England to create a new approach to postdoc career development. Prosper was always intended to become a sustainable, freely accessible model of postdoc career development for all institutions across the sector to use.

Prosper also:

Established a parallel PI network for enhanced collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Incorporated collaboration among multiple Higher Education Institutes (HEIs), facilitating the development and trial of the model simultaneously across three institutions.
Engaged research staff and organisational developers from various institutions through personalised interactions such as one-to-one chats, focus groups, and talks. This approach allowed for a thorough understanding of their specific needs and enabled tailored resource development.

Designed with flexibility in mind, the model addresses the challenges posed by fixed session locations and times, accommodating the diverse and geographically dispersed staff.
Comprises not only a collection of resources but also an integrated approach, complemented by additional activities aimed at supporting the professional development of postdocs.

Gap analysis: postdoc focused career development

To the best of our knowledge there is no postdoc career development provision which does exactly what Prosper does. There is a great range of postdoc career development activity going on globally but we have found that it typically falls under one (or more) of the following categories:

Cost associated – not free to the user
Not developed specifically for postdocs
Not tried and tested (or unclear if it has been)
Created for only a specific discipline or broad disciplinary area
Created for either those wishing to pursue an academic or expressly non-academic career
Available at only the host/originator institution
Networks or schemes that have a focus other than just postdoc career development

Identified gaps

The gaps we identified in existing postdoc career development provision were:

Inclusion of the PI/managers of researchers
Engagement with employers
Applicable to all disciplines
Well-being/work-life balance
Postdoc professional identity
Barriers and considerations of equality, diversity and inclusion beyond gender

	Category
Beyond the Professoriate	1, 2
The Versatile PhD	1, 2
Vitae	1, 2
Inkpath	1, 2
Humanists@work	4, 2
Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training (BEST) Program	2, 4, 6
My IDP	2, 4
Imagine PhD	2, 4
Postdoc Academy	5
Helmholtz Career Development Centers for Researchers, including; ASPIRE-MDC Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (DKFZ) International postdoc program	4, 6
Karolinska Institutet – Career support for postdocs and researchers	4, 6
National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) USA	7
PostdocNet Max Planck	4, 6, 7
UKRSA	7
London Postdoctoral Network (LPN)	4, 7
Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance (SULSA)	2, 4, 6
Medical Research Council Interactive Career Framework	2, 4
The Innovation to Commercialisation of University Research (ICURe) Programme	2, 4, 7
Future learn ‘Career Management for Early Career Academic Researchers’	2, 5
Imperial College – Postdoc and Fellows Development centre	6
University of Cambridge – Cambridge Researcher Development Framework (CamRDF) Postdoc Academy (PdA)	6
University of Oxford – Research Careers website	2
University of Oxford – Career design and development programme	2, 6
University of Leeds – Career Architect programme	5, 6
University of Glasgow – Flourish	6
University of Ghent – PhD Career Hub	2