Dr Janet Metcalfe, Chair and Head, VITAE

Janet Metcalfe is an independent educational consultant specialising in the personal, professional and career development of postgraduate researchers and research staff in higher education. She is Chair and Head of Vitae and responsible for the strategic direction of the programme and its research and development activities. Vitae is committed to enhancing the quality and output of the UK research base, through supporting the training and development of world-class researchers.

As part of her work with Vitae, Janet is involved with several working groups engaged with researcher development. She is a member of the Concordat Strategy Group, which oversees the implementation of the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers, and the sub-group tasked with creating a benchmark of sector practice. She is a founder member of the Impact and Evaluation Group (IEG), previously the Rugby Team, and chairs the Researcher Development Framework project team. She also sits on the Postgraduate Researcher Experience Survey (PRES) and Careers in Research Online Survey (CROS) steering groups and the Supporting Academic Staff Reference Group, which enhances communications, relationships and collaborative working between the Higher Education Academy and other organisations active in academic development.

Her publications include the ‘What Do PhDs Do?’ and ‘What do researchers do?’ series of publications, including ‘Doctoral graduate destinations and impact three years on’. She is Co-author of the Universities UK research report ‘Promoting the UK doctorate: opportunities and challenges’, 2009 and the IEG report ‘Impact of researcher training and development: two years on’, 2010.