Research Knowledge, Methods and Practice
Information and Data Literacy
Navigating the Literature: Smart Tips for Finding and Reading Sources
Monday 27 October 2025, 13:00-14:30, Online
Tuesday 3 March 2026, 13:00-14:30, Online
Not sure where to look for literature? Overwhelmed by endless, useless search results? Trying to read but nothing’s sinking in? Confused by your own notes that you spent ages writing? Don’t worry, help is at hand!
In this interactive workshop, we will show you various literature search tools and other resources that you have access to at Westminster and beyond. You will learn tips and tricks to use these to your advantage and find relevant sources for your PhD. You will discover reading techniques that will help you work through your reading pile effectively and efficiently. You will also learn note-taking tips that will help you extract the crucial information from the literature in a way that it can be smoothly integrated into your writing.
This workshop aligns with the Vitae Researcher Development Framework descriptors:
1.3 Organised; 2.2 Research Methods; 2.3 Information and Data Literacy; 2.5 Critical Thinking and Analysis
Effective Use of Sources in Your Work
Thursday 27 November 2025, 12:00-13:30, Online
Thursday 19 March 2026, 14:30-16:00, Online
Integration and synthesis of sources in postgraduate writing requires greater skill than at undergraduate level. One must master the literature within a given field, rank and organize sources in relation to one’s research question and deploy those sources strategically and judiciously, emphasizing crucial works and glancing over others. This session looks (briefly) at how to organise one’s research harvest, how to signpost the logical relationships between pieces of evidence and how to rhetorically integrate academic works into one’s presentation.
This workshop aligns with the Vitae Researcher Development Framework descriptors:
2.3 Information and Data Literacy; 2.5 Critical Thinking and Analysis; 3.5 Research Integrity and Ethics; 4.2 Research Outputs
Digital and Technological Capabilities
Digital and AI Tools to Help with Your Research:
Thursday 13 November 2025, 11:00-12:00, In Person, Regent Street
Friday 6 February 2026, 11:00-12:00, Online
There are many useful digital tools that you could be utilising to help with your research process. This session will explore these tools, some provided by the University, some freely available. Bring your laptop along if you wish to try these out during the session.
This session will cover:
- multimedia/accessibility functions in databases
- Useful browser extensions
- Microsoft Office shortcuts
- GrammarlyGo (GenAi)
This workshop aligns with the Vitae Researcher Development Framework descriptors:
1.7 Responsible; 2.3 Information and Data Literacy; 2.4 Digital and Technological Capabilities; 3.5 Research Integrity and Ethics
Introduction to RefWorks (Referencing Management Software)
Monday 05 November 2025, 11:00-12:00, Online
Thursday 05 February 2026, 11:00-12:00, Online
By the end of this workshop, you will know how to:
- Create a RefWorks account
- Import references into RefWorks from a variety of sources
- Use RefWorks to create a bibliography in your preferred referencing style
- Use the RefWorks Write-n-Cite plugin to create references within a word processing programme
- Know the advantages and disadvantages of using RefWorks as a reference management tool
This workshop aligns with the Vitae Researcher Development Framework descriptors:
2.2 Research Methods; 2.3 Information and Data Literacy; 2.4 Digital and Technological Capabilities; 3.5 Research Integrity and Ethics
Introduction to Zotero (Reference Management Tool)
Thursday 13 November 2025, 13.00-14:00, In Person, Regent Street
Friday 06 February 2026, 13:00-14:00, Online
Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. In this session we will introduce you to Zotero and it’s functionality.
This workshop aligns with the Vitae Researcher Development Framework descriptors:
2.2 Research Methods; 2.3 Information and Data Literacy; 2.4 Digital and Technological Capabilities; 3.5 Research Integrity and Ethics
Q&A with the Academic Engagement and Learning Development (AELD) Team
Thursday 13 November 2025, 14:00-14:30, In Person, UG02 Regent Street
Thursday 11 December 2025, 12:30-13:00, In Person, UG02 Regent Street
Friday 06 February 2025, 14:00-14:30, Online
Thursday 17th March 2025, 12:30-13:00, Online
Meet the AELD team for advice on Library, information searching, and academic skills. Booking is optional. Feel free to drop in.
Digital Accessibility Series
May/June 2026, online – dates to be confirmed early 2026
Knowing more about digital accessibility and how to make your work more accessible can help you in many ways:
- It can make your academic writing more accessible to a wider audience. Many journals and conferences now only accept accessible submissions.
- It can help you engage and recruit more research participants by making your advertisements clearer to a wider audience and helping you better support participants during studies.
- It can help you improve the quality of your work, whether that be papers, posters, articles or other content.
- It can provide you a marketable set of technical and professional skills to list on your CV and is applicable in just about any industry you can think of.
We encourage you to turn up to all sessions to get the most out of the training, but please also feel free to drop into sessions most relevant to you, or any / all you can attend.
Session 1: Introduction to Accessibility
Session 1 introduces attendees to the concepts within digital accessibility and why it is an important tool for academic and professional achievement.
Session 2: Accessibility in Writing
Session 2 focuses on the tools and skills for users to improve the accessibility of their written work including improving word documents and PDFs for academic publishing.
Session 3: Design
Session 3 expands on accessibility tools and skills in a wider range of content. This session talks users through making images, data visualisations, graphs, social media and video content accessible to support their written work or participant recruitment campaigns.
Session 4: Survey/Design Platforms
Session 4 focuses on additional behaviours that make research participation more accessible, how to engage with disabled users, using accessible survey platforms and hosting more accessible online meetings.
Session 5: Employability
Session 5 concludes the course with a look at how attendees can incorporate their improved accessibility knowledge into employment conversations, highlighting transferable skills and the technical skillset, what sectors accessibility is useful for and how to use it in applications.
This workshop series aligns with the Vitae Researcher Development Framework descriptors:
2.3 Digital and Technological Capabilities; 3.4 Open Research; 4.1 Communication; 4.3 Knowledge Exchange and Public Engagement
Critical Thinking and Analysis
Critical Thinking and Argumentation
Wednesday 26 November 2025, 13:00-15:00, Online
Thursday 26 March 2026, 13:00-15:00, Online
To achieve a PhD you will need to master critical thinking. The workshop will review definitions and descriptions of critical thinking and will discuss how (and if) the notion of critical thinking changes across disciplines and according to the ontologies and epistemologies of different research philosophies.
The workshop will provide tools for critically analysing and evaluating information. Special attention will be given to the analysis and evaluation of research methods considering, among other things, sample representativeness and confirmation bias.
The workshop will help you demonstrate critical thinking in your academic writing by reaching conclusions from evidence, creating meaning, contributing to knowledge and presenting your arguments effectively. This online workshop will be delivered in a friendly and interactive format, and we will welcome your questions and contributions!
This workshop aligns with the Vitae Researcher Development Framework descriptors:
1.7 Reflexive; 2.5 Critical Thinking and Analysis; 2.6 Creativity and Innovation; 4.1 Communication
Creativity and Innovation
Using Mind Maps to Generate, Visualise and Structure Ideas
Thursday 11 December 2025, 10:30-12:30, In Person, Regent Street.
Tuesday 17 March 2026, 10:30-12:30, Online.
A mind map helps generate ideas before you make a formal plan and can reveal themes, gaps and links between ideas. This workshop will help you to develop a mind map on key words or themes so that you can use it as raw material for your earliest thinking and research. Mind maps are also a fantastic way to get started without the pressure of producing beautiful sentences, as such they can be highly beneficial in defying writer’s block. Additionally, they can also become the basis for creating a possible structure for your ideas!
This workshop aligns with the Vitae Researcher Development Framework descriptors:
1.4 Curious; 1.8 Motivated; 2.5 Critical Thinking and Analysis; 2.6 Creativity and Innovation
The Creative Researcher
Wednesday 11 February 2026, 14:00-16:00, Online.
Research is a cyclical form of structured enquiry that begins with an open-ended question or hypothesis and ends with the creation of new knowledge that answers the question and progresses the field of enquiry.
There are several distinct stages in the research cycle that present different kinds of challenge, and the researcher needs to draw on a variety on skills to meet these challenges and make progress in their research. Some of these challenges require a greater emphasis on the critical appraisal of existing knowledge, observations and data, but creativity always works symbiotically with critical thinking.
Other challenges are more speculative and open-ended, requiring a greater emphasis on creativity. These include identifying the initial research question, ideas to proceed with addressing the question, and the design of the investigation.
This workshop, though covering some aspects of critical thinking, will focus mainly on creativity. Everyone is creative to some extent, but little emphasis has been placed on the importance of creativity in research, perhaps because it is less well understood than critical thinking. This workshop will illustrate how creativity is at the heart of progress in research, and how individual creativity can be nurtured and developed further. It will explore the nature of creative thinking and the factors that both nurture and inhibit it. Some ‘tools’ for nurturing creative thinking in research will be applied, and a framework will be described in which the various tools for critical thinking and creativity can be applied in a systematic way.
This workshop aims to describe the nature and nurture of creativity in the context of doing research. It will describe a framework for creative problem solving and will cover some tools, techniques and behaviours that can help access individual and group creativity. Some of the influences that inhibit creative thinking will also be discussed.
This workshop aligns with the Vitae Researcher Development Framework descriptors:
1.4 Curious; 1.6 Adaptable; 2.5 Critical Thinking and Analysis; 2.6 Creativity and Innovation
Research Methods
Research Methods in Social Sciences, Humanities and Architecture (SHAPE)
Wednesday 05 November 2025, 10:00-14:00, In Person, Little Titchfield Street
School of Arts Research Methodologies Workshop Programme (CREAM)
Starts Monday 13 October 2025, 18.00-20.00, Regent Street and Online
Download the document for the full schedule and locations:
Undertaking Data Collection and Fieldwork – An Intercultural Perspective
Thursday 16 April 2026, 16:00-18:00, Online.
When undertaking data collection/fieldwork through, for example, interviews or questionnaires, we are interacting with our informants. These interactions could be on-site or online. The willingness of our informants to contribute, the way in which they will interpret our questions and answer them, as well as a myriad of ethical aspects will be influenced by their cultural background. You might be doing fieldwork in a culture you are very familiar with or one that you know only from a distance. At the same time, the way you are framing and phrasing your questions or request for information is influenced by your own cultural background (and that of your supervisory team). This workshop is designed to help you reflect on these important aspects, in order to fully consider cultural perspectives and their implications for your fieldwork. The workshop is open to all doctoral students preparing for their data collection who have already submitted or are about to submit their ethics application.
This workshop aligns with the Vitae Researcher Development Framework descriptors:
1.4 Curious; 1.9 Responsible; 2.2 Research Methods; 5.1 Research Culture
Research Methods: Quantitative
Quantitative Methods and Analysis Training Series
This training takes place in person across two workshops during February/March 2026 (times tbc).
The workshops build on one another, guiding you through the process of designing an empirical study and analysing the findings with basic statistics as well as more advanced statistics.
Places are limited and allocated through an application process.
Workshop 1 – Design of Empirical Research Studies with Human Participants
This workshop aims to give a broad overview of designing empirical research studies with human participants, covering research questions, sampling and required sample size (power analysis), choice of variables and measurement techniques, as well as design of experimental and correlational studies. It also provides a theoretical basis for techniques which may be practised during practical exercises.
- Introduction to the design of empirical research studies: experimental and correlational studies; experimental controls; selection and recruitment of subjects; piloting; ethical considerations
- Measurement through observation of behaviour: direct and indirect observation; recording techniques; measurement of behaviour; activity sampling
- Measurement through questionnaires and interviews: ranking methods, rating scales, application in interviews and questionnaires
- Good practice in research methods – an overview: ethics, avoiding questionable research practices, open science, preregistration
Workshop 2 – The Basics of Statistical Analysis
This workshop aims to provide an introduction to basic methods used to analyse data from empirical studies with human participants, describing the key features of the data in a study with scientific language. It explains how to compute descriptive statistics and create graphs to visualise quantitative data as well as how to test hypotheses, covering the most commonly used types of inferential statistics and their assumptions. This workshop will be run with the software package SPSS. This workshop will be run in a modular fashion, where some of those aspects shown in parentheses will be covered, depending on Doctoral Researchers’ needs and wishes in this teaching year.
- Descriptive statistics
- Types of data and data management
- Distributions, esp. normal distribution
- Central Tendency and Variability
- Measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode)
- Measures of variability (range, variance, and standard deviation)
- The importance of variability
- (Tables and graphs)
- Testing Hypotheses
- Probability
- Null and Alternative Hypothesis
- Sampling distribution and statistical decision making
- Statistical significance and confidence intervals
- Inferential statistics
- (Non-parametric tests)
- (Chi Square)
- t-test, ANOVA (ANCOVA, MANOVA)
- Correlation and Multiple Linear Regression
Application Form: TBC
- Please submit your application to: graduateschool@westminster.ac.uk by 5pm, Thursday 05 February 2026
This workshop series aligns with the Vitae Researcher Development Framework descriptors:
1.9 Responsible; 2.2 Research Methods; 2.3 Information and Data Literacy; 2.4 Digital and Technological Capabilities
Research Methods – Qualitative
Focus Groups and Qualitative Research
Thursday 20 November 2025, 10:00-15:00, In Person, Regent Street.
Thursday 12 February 2026, 10:00-15:00, Online
In this one-day course (with Part 1 in the morning and Part 2 in the afternoon), students will be introduced to both the basics and new thinking in qualitative research. The course is suitable for beginners and those looking to refresh their knowledge.
Part 1 – Building a project
defining your objective
developing a sample
writing a screener
devising a methodology
writing a discussion guide
Part 2 – Delivering a project
focus group best practice
behavioural economics and the focus group
projective techniques
effective reporting
This workshop series aligns with the Vitae Researcher Development Framework descriptors:
1.4 Curious; 1.9 Responsible; 2.2 Research Methods; 4.1 Communication
Conducting Qualitative Interviews
Tuesday 07 October 2025, 10:00-13:00, Online
Qualitative interviews are a common method of data collection, offering valuable insight into individual experiences and attitudes. This workshop guides you through the interview cycle: from the preparatory stages to conducting interviews and follow-up, highlighting the researcher’s role in shaping data.
The session will include how to build an interview protocol to navigate key topics and explore considerations for question design and questioning strategy. In addition, it will address the ethical considerations involved in qualitative interviewing, with guidance on recognising and responding to potential challenges.
This workshop series aligns with the Vitae Researcher Development Framework descriptors:
1.4 Curious; 1.9 Responsible; 2.2 Research Methods; 4.1 Communication
Ethnography as a Research Method Workshop Series
In this specially curated workshop series for the GS, Miriyam Aouragh (Professor of Digital Anthropology) introduces Digital Ethnography.
With a special focus on the changing infrastructural realities of social life, Aouragh will demonstrate how best to explore digital communities, online spaces, internet activist, citizen journalists, visual archives, transnational art collectives or architectural virtual sites. This short course consists of three workshops and offers an engaging training in the fundamentals of social scientific inquiry related to digital ethnography.
Ethnography is about learning first-hand about the behaviour of groups, cultural interactions, or dreams and dilemmas of collectives and how to consider a particular research objective through intersectional lenses. Ethnographers immerses themselves in a social environment and observe the kind of unseen, authentic or spontaneous dynamics that we do not get from a survey or data analysis. Ethnography as (mostly written) output is unique in how it ‘studies up’, approach big questions through small places as the expression goes. Ethnographies do not only helps us understand the way people interact with the world around them; they are also very reflective.
Due to the particular history of the discipline as well as the subjective levels in analyses, it is explicitly transparant. This means that it discusses its main epistemic inspirations at the outset and delineates the empirical tools at every stages of the research. Doing so, it acknowledges how the (power) relation between researcher and interlocutor as well as the objective conditions have shaped the process and results of the study. For this reason, ethnography emphasises the scholarly and academic rules of engagement in terms of ethical paradigms and ethical conduct.
Part 1: Friday 27 February 2026, 14.00-15.30, In Person, Harrow campus
The Part 1 workshop will explore how ethnography evolved to help understand how this research approach has gone through different theoretical and practical stages and evolved into digital ethnography;
Part 2: Friday 20 March 2026, 14.00-15.30, In Person, Harrow campus
The Part 2 workshop will discuss the most interesting real life examples and empirical case studies that relate to ethnographic models. How does the circulation of online content relate to pre-existing forms of community and belonging? The way people interact with the world around them and the way groups form communities in and through digital infrastructures are discussed through an intersectional lense;
Part 3: Friday 08 May 2026, 14.00-15.30, In Person, Harrow campus
The Part 3 workshop will discern the main epistemic roots tools of anthropology in order to understand the unique relation between ethnography and ethics, and in due course understand which moral, political and social boundaries ethnography produces, or conversely, puts into question. After workshop 2 you will be asked to identify digital “field” or “kinship” defined through your own doctoral research framework and undertake repeated observations of the (digital) interactions and activities. During workshop #3 we will discuss these observations, analyse different aspects of the data collected, and design a potential conceptual approach that fit the analysis of your own project. This application is meant to entice you to expose your own PhD project to creative experimentation with anthropological modes of inquiry as discussed during workshop 1, but also intended to foster reflexivity about ethics, which we will discuss in more detail during workshop 3.
This workshop series aligns with the Vitae Researcher Development Framework descriptors:
1.4 Curious; 1.9 Responsible; 2.2 Research Methods; 2.4 Digital and Technolgical Capabilities
Zine-ing is Believing: Exploring Zines for Research Purposes
Wednesday 12 November 2025, 13:00-16:00, In Person, Regent Street.
Zines – are typically non-commercial self-published print works produced in small batches. Their content can vary, and its origins are said to be traced back to American science fiction fans in the 1930s, the term zine, is said to be short for ‘fan magazine’.
Zine-ing has become a medium that has been used by many to explore many different topics and interests. It offers a great creative outlet and has also become a rich source for understanding social historical contexts. It also provides an ‘alternative’ voice to mainstream media and allows marginalised voices to present their worldview.
This session run by Ka-Ming from the AELD team is a unique opportunity to engage with a zine collection, explore more creative ways to research and reflect on research. It includes:
- Opportunity to explore a small selection of zines to get a sense of the variety and variation within the medium
- Introductory talk on how zines can potentially be used to reflect on the research process or as a research method.
- Hands-on zine making with materials provided by the facilitator.
This workshop aligns with the Vitae Researcher Development Framework descriptors:
1.4 Curious; 2.2 Research Methods; 4.1 Communication; 4.3 Knowledge Exchange and Public Engagement
NVIVO (Qualitative Data Analysis Software) Intermediate Level Training
This training will take place online across three workshops, 9:30-14:00, on 23rd March, 24th March and 25th March 2026.
The course is for people who have already been using and have some experience of NVivo,who are looking to make sure they are most effectively using the software to its full potential. The workshops are hands-on, delivered thorough a blend of demonstration, discussion, and practical exercises. Participants are provided with slide decks, reading lists and a range of resources to accompany the course and to support consolidation of the topics covered.
Each workshop will be delivered online (via Zoom) by expert trainers QDAS.
By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
- Move beyond simple coding to understand how to generate codes, the logic of coding scheme structures and retrieve, review and reorganise coding
- understand the importance of planning and how to effectively implement analytical strategies and software tactics
- identify and interrogate patterns and relationships
- visualise data through maps and charts and understand how to visually represent relationships and links
- understand both the technical and human aspects of team working within NVivo projects.
Places are limited and allocated through an application process:
- Please submit your completed application form to: graduateschool@westminster.ac.uk by 5pm, Deadline TBC
- Due to the limit on places, priority will be given to those doctoral researchers who are further along in their studies.
- The series of three workshops will be offered again between 23-25 March 2026, with applications opening in January 2026.
For an ‘Introduction to Nvivo for Beginners’ resource, please visit: DRDP Resources: Research Knowledge, Methods and Practice
This workshop series aligns with the Vitae Researcher Development Framework descriptors:
1.4 Curious; 2.2 Research Methods; 2.4 Digitial and Technological Capabilities 2.5 Critical Thinking and Analysis