When you're looking to learn a new language, there are all sorts of websites which can help support your learning. Some have lists of vocabulary, interactive games, or practise scenarios which you can work on. Others can use your computer's speakers and microphone to help you with your listening and speaking. Below we're listing some of the most useful websites for learning a language.

With the summer behind us (at least for those in the northern hemisphere), now is the best time to start planning your academic calendar for the coming year. However, the number of conferences and workshops taking place in the next twelve months is enormous and may be overwhelming when it comes to choosing the best one(s) for you. In order to help you with this endeavour, we have put together a selection of conferences and workshops organized by national and international organizations, covering a wide range of topics in social sciences.

As an academic, you may feel somewhat insulated from the profit-driven business world. Certainly, academia has traditionally been regarded as an enclave separated from corporate concerns over profits; one which is supported by governments and individuals and focuses on teaching and research rather than on making money. However, with the huge growth of the education industry over the last few decades, institutions have necessarily become more corporate.

If you're working as a professor, you likely have a large number of projects on the go and a lot of demands on your time. It can be hard to keep track of everything, but there are tools out there which can help you. If you have a smartphone or tablet, there are some great apps available which can make your work life a little easier:

If you've completed your PhD and are looking for a postdoctoral position, career progression can be intimidating and stressful. To help guide you through this transition, we offer here a guide for finding and applying for postdoctoral funding. Although some departments advertise for postdoc positions involving researching, technical support or teaching which is needed by the group, if your research does not align exactly with the research priorities of a lab it may be hard to find an appropriate position. The best option for many researchers is to apply for a postdoc grant or fellowship.

With the end of the year approaching, we feel it’s time to look to the start of next year and start planning which conferences to attend. The number of events available is overwhelming, so following up on our 2014 End of Year Round Up, we decided to draft a list for the start of 2015.

As the year slowly draws to a close it can be easy to focus on the work in front of us and forget about the many academic conferences still taking place around the world. Such events are a great place to build your network, boost your CV and gain new insight into your field. This list offers you a brief overview of the many conferences in banking, economics, finance and related fields that will be taking place across the globe during the last months of 2014.

While we all know the importance of publishing widely in terms of moving forward in an academic career, what is sometimes left out of the discussion is how to make sure that your research has an actual impact in the community it is addressing, or in the world at large. If you would like your research to be read beyond the gates of the ivory tower, you need to know how to effectively promote yourself and your work.

Although most new professors have already clocked countless hours in the classroom as teaching assistants, the shift to being the sole authority in the room can be a scary one. No matter how prepared you might feel, the first days (or weeks or months) at any new job tend to be a bit overwhelming – and that's totally normal. So, whether you feel like legging it home and hiding under the covers until winter break, or you just need a little extra boost to get you on the right track, the following 10 tips will help you stay motivated, organized and have you ready for the coming academic year and all it’s likely to throw at you.

Although those of us in the northern hemisphere have just entered the dog days of summer, fall is just around the corner, meaning it’s the right time to start planning out your autumn conference schedule. Whether you’re dreaming of the changing leaves and crisp air or dreading the idea of darker evenings and cooler days, right now you should focus on choosing the right event for you from this great list of academic conferences taking place around the world.

For many recent PhDs and other doctoral graduates, the first step in an academic career is at least one, if not two or three post doc or junior researcher positions. Regardless of which department you work in, such a position is a great way to make connections, publish your research, add experience to your CV and get a feel for life as an academic.

Many people who are already years or decades into their careers find themselves wanting to build upon their skillsets and expand their professional qualifications. Perhaps they want to make a career change, feel stuck in a mid-level position but lack the qualifications necessary for advancement, or perhaps they are just interested in gaining new knowledge but don’t have the time or means to head back to school. In the past, people in such situations could enroll in evening or weekend courses at community centers or continuing education departments at local universities.

Last year, we offered you a list of 10 finance conferences worth attending in 2013. Now, with summer just around the corner and conference season already underway, we want to make sure you know which conferences to register for ASAP and which to have on your radar for the coming months. With finance such a hot topic across the world right now, we’ve expanded our list to 15, while limiting the time frame to the summer months. Towards the end of the summer we’ll post another list for fall and winter conferences.

With the release of the Spanish report this week in the worldwide series of INOMICS Job Market Reports, more information has been added to the wealth of data regarding the interests and experiences of economists across the globe.

Econometrics is a thorough discipline that demands time and effort to be mastered. For many people who want to pursue a degree in economics it serves as an obstacle, but as we’ve shown before, there are many resources you can use to your advantage to become proficient in it: blogs and podcasts can introduce you to the topic and give practical advice, free online courses will incentivize you to learn systematically and increase your ability to perform a research using different econometrics and statistical software like “R” or “Stata”, and YouTube channels can greatly support your studies by giving access to lectures and tutorials of great professors at any time convenient for you.

Anyone working as an economist, mathematician, management consultant or researcher is likely to be dealing with numbers on a regular basis. Whether to refute claims, inform decisions or to build evidence to support one’s case, a good command of figures is essential for many professions. In other words, one cannot escape learning and using statistics!

Teaching, whether at school or university level, is generally and  rightly considered a worthy occupation. As supported by some Professor Ratings, however, unfortunately not every high school, college or university can boast perfect ratings for their academic staff, and many individual lecturers and professors have room for improvement, at least in the views of the students.

Business Economics is a rather broad area of economics covering everything from business organization, management and marketing to the role of entrepreneurs and impact of the government on corporations. It is also assumed to be one of the most applicable research branches within economics: where today’s academic research might result in tomorrow’s industry implementations.

Finance has become a very attractive field for many people in the last decades as it “smells” of money and promises a successful career after obtaining a degree, even though the financial crisis has slowed down this popularity trend. While many fresh Bachelor and Master graduates massively apply for positions in investment banks and consultancies, some decide to pursue a PhD, which is the way to life-long involvement in the academic world.

Econometrics is something towards which many people have mixed feelings: both fear and respect. If you want to get a degree in economics, however, there is no way you can get away without studying econometrics on some level; and if you want to become a great economist you will have to master it: to build models, run regressions and (hopefully) predict the future. The economics profession has been blamed for failing to predict the global financial crisis, but as econometrics is considered to be one of the core disciplines to help prevent a recurrence in the future, we have collected a number of useful links for online learning and self-improvement in this field.