What are generic skills?
A PhD programme provides training in research methods. Most of your time will be spent on discipline-specific aspects, such as reading and understanding the background literature, designing and planning experiments and surveys, learning the research methodology of your field, writing scholarly papers and finally presenting a substantive piece of original writing – a PhD thesis. Complementary to this are generic or transferable skills. These are the kinds of skills that will enable you to be successful in all situations where the ability to demonstrate analytical and synthetic skills is at a premium. They include such things as being able to communicate yourself and your research to any audience; to be able to manage a project and understand the nature of teamwork and how you fit into a team; to be familiar with ethical issues related to your discipline; to understand the opportunities for exploitation of your discoveries and inventions (intellectual property); to have the self awarenes
