The Emerging Research Cultures project is a strategic project funded by Wellcome to form and support a community of practice with the 23 PhD training programmes funded in 2019. These programmes were deeply affected by the restrictions imposed by the UK government in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. As in person meetings were restricted, teaching, attendance of labs, meetings with potential supervisors, other staff members and other members of the programmes were all moved to virtual platforms. In April 2021, the Emerging Research Cultures project held two workshops to explore what had been the students’ experiences of beginning their PhD training during the pandemic. This report summarises the discussions and draws out the main themes. Three points stood out in these discussions. Firstly, people clearly welcomed the opportunity to talk about their experience and this in itself contributed to their processing of the experience they had gone through together. Secondly, student and staff experiences were very closely interconnected, and each affected the other. The quality of research culture, clearly, is not a matter for students alone, and staff live this as deeply as students do. And lastly, mental health issues, or self-descriptions that are related to mental health, were prominent in the discussion. This may be simply because people had the opportunity to talk about what they were going through, and the months of pandemic restrictions have been difficult for everyone. However, there clearly have been deep challenges on the mental health and wellbeing front, which may demand attention and action.