Skills and Tutors

Book a Librarian

We offer one-to-one support for Courtauld students looking for assistance with finding books, articles, images, scholarship, or art. Learn how to become a powerful library researcher and other digital and information skills. To book a 50 minute appointment:

1. Check availability through our online calendar. Bookings open on Wednesday afternoons for the following Monday-Friday.
2. Book the session that suits you. The booking system shows the next available appointment. If no appointments are shown, please check again later.
3. Tell us how you would like us to help you.
4. We email you to confirm your booking. The session will take place through Microsoft Teams unless you specify an in-person appointment is your preference. Please make sure that you are signed into Teams ahead of your appointment.

If you need assistance please contact us.

Tutors

Royal Literary Fellows

Royal Literary Fund Fellows

Students can enlist the support of our two Royal Literary Fellows, Jane Rogoyska, and Ella Frears. Jane and Ella are both professional writers and offer support to Courtauld students thanks to the Royal Literary Fund’s Fellowship Scheme. The RLF website has a very useful guide to writing essays.

Students can book an appointment to see them by emailing Jane.Rogoyska@rlfeducation.org.uk or Ella.Frears@rlfeducation.org.uk

Please pick one of the fellows to contact rather than contacting both at once, this is because Fellows have independent booking systems.

The Royal Literary Fellows can help you to improve your academic writing skills, reading strategies, and organisation of material. If you would like to improve your style, clarity of argument, if you need help with structure, tone, or simply getting to grips with the writing process, please do get in touch with them. (Note: this is not an editing or proofreading service).

Ideally, they will look at some of your written work in advance and then discuss it with you in person at the meeting. Please state in your email the times you are not available so that they can allocate you a session that fits in with your schedule. It’s best to book well in advance, if possible. If you leave it until the week your essay is due, you may find there are no free slots.

If you find you can’t make the appointment, please email them as soon as possible so that they can use your time for someone else. Students can book one or two tutorials per semester, and sessions are available for any Courtauld student, from BA to PhD.

Academic Skills Tutor:

Anjali Thakariya offers advice on skills specific to Art History, including research, visual analysis, and presentation. She can also help you to understand essay feedback, develop revision strategies, or cope with last-minute essay panic.

Any student can make an appointment with Anjali: please email her to book an appointment. Anjali is based in the library at Vernon Square. Email Anjali Thakariya for an appointment or advice: anjali.thakariya@courtauld.ac.uk

Adjustments for Neurodivergent Students

The Courtauld also offers confidential appointment-based specialists, for students who are seeking adjustments based on their diagnostic report and/or medical evidence. This includes students with specific learning differences, mental health concerns, and autistic spectrum conditions.

If you have (or suspect that you have) a specific learning difficulty (Spld), such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia or dyspraxia, or if your diagnostic assessment is more than five years old, you can contact wellbeing@courtauld.ac.uk or reasonable.adjustments@courtauld.ac.uk for advice about assessment and support. If appropriate, we can refer students to a partner organization for assessment and the cost of the test will be covered by The Courtauld.

How can the Adjustment Specialists help?

The support offered is designed around individual academic needs.

Our experts can help with:

Understanding: how you approach challenges, how you learn best, and how you can succeed

Strategies: techniques to be effective in reading, writing, planning, and all other aspects of study

Assistive technology: how you can make the most of technology designed to make you an independent and effective student

Communication: develop the confidence to ask the right questions, stay in touch with people who can help you, and respond when you need to

Organisation and planning: learn to organize your time well so you have time for studying, writing, and wellbeing

Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA)

You can apply for Disabled Students’ Allowances and more information about the application process and the evidence you need to submit is available on the government website.

Personal Tutors

If you want to address an academic or pastoral issue, you can also speak to your Personal Tutor. Please email them for an appointment.

Citing and Referencing

The Courtauld’s recommended referencing style is the Chicago Manual of Style Online. The Library team and the Academic Skills tutor can support you in using this style guide. Other humanities referencing styles may also be acceptable, but please check with your course tutor and ensure that you are consistent.

It is important that you keep track of the sources that you use. This helps you remember which ones are authoritative and retrace them when you need so. Most importantly keeping a record of the sources will be useful when you are referencing them on your assessed works. 

While it remains essential to understand the principles of citation there are also tools that can help you organise the process. Reference Management Software can help you integrate the research process with the compilation of a bibliography, rather than treating them as separate tasks. Even if you don’t need to write a bibliography, they are a powerful way of keeping track of the literature you have consulted and allow for annotation, tagging, note-taking, creating relationships between documents and sharing documents among research groups.​ There is a range of software packages, some are free or low cost such as Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote, et al. The Library can help you start on Zotero. 

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Library ‘Top Tips’ short videos on key library skills

You might find our short 3-minute videos below very helpful:
Primary Sources, Introducing Open Access Resources, Developing and Refining Search Strategies, Evaluating Information.

Contact us

library@courtauld.ac.uk