Researcher Education and Development Scholarship Conference

The Researcher Education and Development Scholarship (REDS) Conference is an annual, free, online, international conference focusing on the scholarship of Researcher Education and Development. It was founded by conference Director Dr Kay Guccione, at the University of Sheffield in 2015.

In 2020 the Conference moved to a fully online format and was hosted by the University of Leeds, until 2024. From 2025 the REDS Conference will be hosted by the University of Glasgow. It will retain its free, online format which has proven to be inclusive and accessible to global audiences.

The REDS conference is guided by the Advisory Group. Advisory Group members join the board for the 12-month period ahead of the conference through an annual open call for members. Advisory Group members agree the conference theme, shape the call text, and provide peer review for submitted abstracts. They chair sessions, and, as of 2025, support development of papers into 1000-word blog articles.

Presenters and participants are kindly requested to follow the REDS Conference Code of Practice.

The REDS Conference Archive up to 2024 is here.

Statement of purpose and remit for the Researcher Education and Development Scholarship Conference

The Researcher Education and Development Scholarship (REDS) Conference is an annual, free, online, international conference focusing on the scholarship (evaluation, research into practice, action research, theoretical perspectives) of Researcher Education and Development in its widest sense. Positioned to complement with other sector conferences focusing on educational practice for developing research and researchers (Vitae, UKCGE, Advance HE, ARMA and many more Higher Education-focused research conferences that take place globally), the REDS Conference uniquely focuses on research into practice, and promotes the value of scholarship-led practice in our specialist field. 

The REDS Conference exists to support scholarly work related to the development and education of research and researchers, including the local, institutional and sector cultures in which they work. Since launching in 2015, we have engaged with sector trends  and hot topics emerging  related to the theory and practice of developing researchers and scholars including PGRs (HDRs/Doctoral researchers, e.g. PhD), Research Staff (Postdocs, PDRAs), Research Fellows, and Academic Staff. This includes those for whom research work may be fractional, or done in addition to their paid role such as Research Professional Staff (Managers, Administrators, Developers, Librarians and other specialists), Technicians and Research Facilities specialists, Teaching Specialist Academics including those for whom research is called Practitioner Research, or Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

Whilst REDS originally stemmed from the development work ongoing in the university sector, we have taken recent steps to include work related to developing researchers in Research Industries, the NHS and other medical contexts, and in Research Institutes, including work from/about Independent Researchers. We maintain a defined focus on the development of Researchers in all forms, noting that taking a cultural view of development may require us to open discussions to include topics related to, for example, research at the Masters level, attitudes and experiences of employers/employment, researchers’ home lives and experiences, researchers who teach, and the materials, resources, places, and spaces that are experienced as part of research work and research career development.

As Researcher/Academic Developers (and related professions) we include ourselves within this definition of researchers, and the ‘S’ in REDS has been purposefully selected to signal that we wish the REDS Conference to forefront a ‘Scholarly’ focus for the sector’s collective endeavours to develop researchers and research cultures. The REDS Conference places preference on research into practice and requires that selected conference authors situate their work within the available literature and theory base, to support and sustain the sector in delivering robust evidence-informed practice. Additionally, we aim to support the great deal of daily evaluative work that developers do, to be critically examined and presented in line with the existing theory and the literature bases. In doing so we seek to support publishing both from within and about our profession and offer support for colleagues learning how to research their practice.