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ERA Mentoring Scheme

The British Society of Gerontology’s (BSG) Emerging Researchers in Ageing (ERA) provides students, early career academics, researchers, and practitioners with opportunities for learning, networking, and mentor support. ERA also welcomes academics, researchers, and practitioners who are making a mid-career change to ageing studies. Supporting the next generation of gerontologists is vital. ERA plays an essential role in building the capacity of members through supporting them to network and profile their work within the BSG.

The purpose of the ERA mentoring scheme is to bring together early career researchers, including postgraduate, PhD, and postdoctoral researchers, with more senior academics and researchers. Examples of topic areas that could be covered in mentoring sessions include methodological challenges, career planning and development, navigating professional challenges, and writing for publication.

Get involved:

We ask that both mentors and mentees are current BSG members https://www.britishgerontology.org/membership. To be eligible to be a mentor we ask that you are a mid-career researcher or more senior, those who are early career researchers are eligible to be mentees.

There is no explicit requirement to be a “gerontologist”, but your research interests or expertise should tie to ageing in some way. Some of our recommended areas of interest include:

age-friendly environments
caregiving
health and wellbeing
technology
work and retirement
The below questionnaires contain suggested areas of interest, with opportunity to add your own, so you can demonstrate what your research areas are, and we can find suitable crossover with a potential mentor/mentee.

To register your interest to become a mentor, please complete the mentor questionnaire on the side bar of the webpage, and return to era@britishgerontology.org alongside a current CV.
If you wish to be mentored, please complete the mentee questionnaire on the side bar of the webpage, and return to era@britishgerontology.org alongside a current CV.

What are we asking for?
The commitment to the mentoring relationship is one year in the first instance (one year from being matched with a mentor/mentee).
We ask for a minimum of three communications between mentor/mentee over the year. This can be via email, MS Teams, Zoom, or any other platform agreed between mentor and mentee at the start of the mentoring relationship.
Communication between mentor and mentee should be timely, where possible sending responses/replies within five working days.
To be beneficial for both parties, the scope and goals of the mentoring relationship should be clearly defined at the start, depending on career stage, mentees may require support in a range of different areas. The mentor/mentee questionnaires (see links above) provide opportunity to indicate the areas in which you would like to be supported (mentees) or are able to provide support (mentors) and the ERA mentoring team will seek to match mentors and mentees based on this and shared research interests.
We will ask both the mentor and mentee for feedback towards the end of the first year in the form of a short survey, this will help us to improve the mentoring scheme.

For more information, please email Miranda Quinney and Lisa Davison at era@britishgerontology.org

ERA Committee

Activities

ERA Mentoring Scheme

ERA Pre-Conference Event

ERA Events

Stirling Prize

Code of Conduct.pdf (108k)

ERA Mentor Questionnaire.docx (16k)

ERA Mentee Questionnaire.docx (17k)