Frequently asked questions

You can enrol onto LISS training courses via an online course booking system, SkillsForge. We encourage all non-funded PhD students at KCL, QMUL or ICL who are interested in attending our training courses, to fill in LISS Affiliate Registration Form and become an affiliate student of LISS DTP before signing up for our courses. 

All non-funded PhD Students at QMUL or ICL should visit Self Sign Up (kcl.ac.uk) to create an account to request access to SkillsForge. We check request regularly for approval. Once your access is approved, you will be able to log in as an external user to your SkillsForge account and register for LISS courses. 

King’s College London doctoral students will be able to log into this system immediately, using your K number and password as for email. Students who are funded by the ESRC through LISS DTP will already have log in credentials and will not need to register as a LISS DTP Affiliate Student for access. 

LISS DTP training bookings work on a termly basis; only courses in the immediately upcoming/current term will be available for booking, i.e., during our autumn term (October- December), only autumn term courses will be open for booking. Exact dates/times/locations and required preparation for each course are usually accessible via detailed Course Outlines on the Training Programme webpage. 

Termly bookings on SkillsForge open as follows in 2024/25 (exact dates TBA): 

• Autumn 2024 registration- from 3rd October 2024 

• Spring 2025 registration- from mid December 2024 

• Summer 2025 registration- from early April 2025 

For all our courses, booking will usually close 2 working days before the start of the first session, or when the course reaches maximum capacity with a short waiting list.    

Registration is now on a first-come first-served basis.  However, we will closely monitor ‘no-shows’ (students who book onto courses and then do not attend or cancel their place via the SkillsForge system). We operate waiting lists for our courses. If you fail to cancel your place in a timely fashion (i.e., a minimum of 48 hours ahead of the first session) or to show up to courses you book onto, your fellow students will lose the opportunity to take the course.. 

While King’s College London doctoral students who are unaffiliated with or not funded by LISS DTP can book onto our courses via the SkillsForge booking system, we will prioritise King’s students who are affiliated with us when courses are oversubscribed. Queen Mary and Imperial College doctoral students who are not funded by LISS must register to become a LISS DTP Affiliate Student in order to receive access to the SkillsForge booking system for our courses. 

All supporting documents for our courses are hosted on our KEATS page from Autumn 2024. LISS team will enrol the registered students on KEATS to access the course materials.  

LISS DTP’s Research Areashttps://liss-dtp.ac.uk/thematic-pathways/ are designed to help foster interdisciplinary and inter-institutional activities across the three DTP partner universities. They’re a useful way of getting to know other PhD students outside your department or school who are working on similar research topics. 

Each Research Area also has a budget to help its members plan and run events and activities around their research interests and training needs.  Academic Research Area Leads will provide some support and direction, but much of the Research Area activity can be driven by its affiliated students. 

You can change your LISS DTP Research Area at any time by contacting us at liss-dtp@kcl.ac.uk. If you are a LISS-funded student, you will require support from your supervisor and the Research Area Lead of your new Research Area.  

If the DTP course you want to attend has multiple sessions, please DO NOT book onto it unless you can attend at least 75% of the sessions- i.e., 3 out of 4 sessions on a 4–session course. Otherwise, you are potentially taking a space away from another student who could commit to attending a course in full. Your attendance will be monitored via attendance sheets at each session. Please inform the course convenor directly if you are going to miss a session of a course. 

LISS DTP runs a ‘one off/one on’ standard waiting list procedure once a course is fully subscribed.  We ask that you cancel your place via the SkillsForge system as quickly as possible if you find that you can no longer attend a course onto which you are booked.  If you are on a waiting list for a course and receive an offer of a place, please be aware that these offers are time sensitive.  You will need to click on a link in the email you receive in order to gain a space on the course or else your offer will expire, and the place will be offered to the next student on the waiting list. 

We anticipate that much of our DTP programme will remain the same year-on-year, so if you cannot attend a course during one academic year, it will likely be repeated in the following year.

We only deal with LISS DTP courses that start with ‘LISS’ in the course code. 

If you are an affiliate student from Queen Mary or Imperial College, only LISS DTP courses (those with codes starting LISS) will be available for you to book. 

LISS funded students and other King’s College doctoral students will be able to access and book other courses via SkillsForge, but LISS DTP is only responsible for courses with codes starting LISS. 

 For assistance with courses starting with ‘PGR’ and ‘RS’, email doctoraltraining@kcl.ac.uk For courses starting with ‘LIB’ and ‘ISS’ you need to contact King’s Library Services.