The phrase attributed to Sir Isaac Newton, “if I have seen further, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants,” is often used as a metaphor for research and innovation: how each great thinker builds on the thoughts and research of others, the unending column of prize winners and esteemed fellows pursuing academic endeavour.
However, the environment I sought as a researcher and aim to enable as a university leader is more of a supportive collective, certainly one with a much less precarious base.
Perhaps the most important lessons learnt during my own research career was that the giants of research, innovation and knowledge exchange whose shoulders we are more often standing on are not the senior staff but rather the PhD students, early career researchers, postdoctoral fellows and technicians, who turn challenging questions posed into the most exciting innovative answers. And often without the bias of doing things the way we have in the past.
Untangling
Achieving the UK’s priority of innovation and the growth it drives requires a long-range vision to set direction matched with agility to rapidly pivot as new opportunities arise. This agility needs a skilled research workforce and the attraction of the brightest minds into roles at all stages of a research and innovation career.
However, these giants, whose shoulders we balance UK innovation on, need long-term confidence to initiate a career which currently has precarity baked in. Growing investment to support research and innovation is needed, but investment in equipment, facilities and consumables will not succeed without engaged and enabling expertise.
Alongside this, regional disparity of funding, low research cost recovery, and increasing regulatory demands are posing the question of how much research can any university afford to undertake. The simple answer may appear to be to do less, or divert funding to specialist institutes without dual responsibility for teaching – however, this would undermine the agility that is underpinned by broad expertise, civic and industrial partnerships and infrastructure which resides across our higher education institutions.
Fixing this knotty problem needs a systematic approach, balancing external and internal funding alongside improved recovery of the true cost of research. With restrictions in the sector and reduced internal funding impacting decisions, it is imperative to not forget the essential role of the precarious base on which our research activity in the UK is built – and to support it accordingly.
Concordat priorities
My commitment to career development and recognition of researchers is why I am excited to be continuing the great work led by Julia Buckingham as the incoming chair of the Researcher Development Concordat Strategy Group, which oversees the Researcher Development Concordat.
The concordat was first published in 2019, building on agreements of funding bodies and universities over a decade earlier. The current signatories are over 100 higher education and research institutes, who commit to the principles of environment and culture, employment, and career development for researchers in our institutions and 17 funding agencies who set grant holder requirements relating to the concordat commitments.
The concordat has recently undergone a review which identified future areas of focus to achieve continued effectiveness. Three priorities were identified:
First, agreeing a set of shared principles to define the characteristics of a positive environment for research culture, and second, working to a shared set of research culture values with measurable indicators of progress. We seek to align a set of shared broad principles to define the characteristics of a positive environment for research culture. While these must link to the REF people, culture and environment measures, they need to be high-level shared principles and ensure that they define measurable indicators of progress to avoid confusion across multiple agendas. These also need to be high enough level to ensure a collective agreement to deliver whilst also accommodating the diversity and breadth of higher education institutions and research organisations.
The third priority is simplifying the bureaucracy. This is essential in a sector with ever-growing demands of attention and associated costs to deliver. While we must maintain accountability, we need to simplify the bureaucracy to work in service of our principles and values, not dictate them. In short, we must simplify for our communities how the different national concordats can complement rather than compete for attention. To achieve this, we are reviewing and reforming reporting requirements to achieve better alignment and to incorporate them into existing reporting where possible. We are working with other bodies to align data and reporting requirements.
I am also keen to work with industry body representatives to understand and reduce barriers to the movement of careers from academia to industry and vice versa. This porosity of career is needed for both innovation and rapid business adoption of innovative ideas. For this porosity to support innovation and growth we also need to enhance engagement from the industry to support researchers throughout a changing career.
While this work is delivered by the concordat strategy group, the concordat is collectively owned by the sector and continued engagement is needed to ensure the concordat is fit for purpose. Given this, we are looking for engagement in future work, more details about which can be found on the concordat webpage. I look forward to working with higher education institutions, industry, funders, the Researcher Development Concordat Strategy Group, and individuals to deliver our collective commitments.
The Researcher Development Concordat Strategy Group secretariat is jointly funded through funding bodies from the four nations: Research England, the Scottish Funding Council, Medr (previously HEFCW), and the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland. I thank them for their continued support.
“However, the environment I sought as a researcher and aim to enable as a university leader is more of a supportive collective, certainly one with a much less precarious base.”
That was a good start to the article. Unfortunately, the remainder is just the usual bureaucratic managerial stuff. In particular, I don’t see anything concrete about making a research career less precarious. With the current rounds of redundancies at universities, this precarity is not only the case for people on fixed term contracts, but even for people on open-ended contracts. Working in UK Higher Education has possibly never been more precarious.