Dr Anna Pilz

Dr Anna Pilz

Academic Developer and Trainer: Researcher Developer

Contact details

• Email: anna.pilz@ed.ac.uk

Role in the IAD

In my role as Academic Developer and Trainer in the Researcher Development team, I develop, design, and deliver cross-University skills training and support for both postgraduate researchers and research staff. I enjoy the collaborative nature of my role where I work with colleagues from support services, Colleges, and Schools from across the university including the Edinburgh Research Office to ensure that our training provision is relevant and engaging. Driven to improve research cultures and environments, I can draw on extensive experience as an international postdoctoral researcher and bring my in-depth understanding of the European and UK research environments to the role.

For postgraduate researchers, I convene Getting Started With Postgraduate Research and offer a variety of focussed workshops on project and time management, networking, academic writing, publishing, developing funding applications, and personal research strategies. For research staff, I offer 1-1 consultations on 'How to Build your Research Profile' and practical workshops on funding, fellowship applications, and mentoring. I initiated and lead on the IAD's #ResearcherRealities.

Professional interests

As a first-generation academic who has been on fixed-term contracts for over 10 years, I am interested in the impact of precarity on researchers' lives, institutional values, and career narratives. A firm believer in the benfits of writing groups and works-in-progress sessions, I strive to build communities and aim to enable, facilitate, and encourage conversations about research processes in all their shapes, sizes, and forms.

I continue to be active as an independent researcher with a specialism in nineteenth-century Irish and Scottish writing, particularly literary narratives of environmental change of coastal and arboreal environments.

Selected Publications

For a list of our publications, please visit the IAD website:

Researcher Development team publications and outputs