Speaker
Description
Dr Tracy Underwood is Head of Translational Research at Leo Cancer Care. She is also a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College London. In 2011, Tracy founded the International Upright Radiotherapy and Imaging Research Consortium, bringing together researchers and clinicians from across the world to accelerate progress in this emerging area. Previously, as a radiotherapy researcher she worked at some of the most innovative clinics and academic departments worldwide, including Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School in Boston, IUCT Oncopole in Toulouse, the Christie NHS Foundation Trust, the University of Manchester, and the University of Oxford. Together with her collaborators she is currently researching many aspects of upright radiotherapy, including: immobilisation methods, patient perspectives, anatomical changes with body position and treatment planning. She likes to spend her free time on the beach or in the forest with her husband and two young kids.
Summary
Conflict is an inevitable aspect of doctoral training and work. Whether it's disagreement with a supervisor over project direction, a dispute over authorship credit, or friction with a collaborator whose working style clashes with your own, unresolved conflict can slow research, damage relationships, and take a major toll on wellbeing.
This session introduces concepts for understanding and resolving conflict, grounded in the distinction between positions (what people say they want) and interests (what they actually need) - plus the five classic conflict-handling modes (competing, accommodating, avoiding, compromising, collaborating).
We'll explore how conflict shows up differently depending on career path: for example the power dynamics of a PhD supervisory relationship, cross-functional tension between R&D, product, regulatory, and commercial teams in industry, or perhaps between clinical and research priorities in a hospital setting.
Whether you're heading toward an academic career, a clinical role, or industry, the ability to navigate conflict productively, rather than avoid it or let it escalate, is a hugely useful transferable skill. This session is designed to give a little time and space to think this through.