1.6 - Research Development
| Wednesday, June 18, 2025 |
| 9:45 AM - 11:00 AM |
| Tinto |
Overview
Ready to turn the art of building research collaborations into an adventure? This workshop is your backstage pass to discovering the secret sauce that animates successful academic partnerships. Dive into vibrant case studies from diverse faculties and industries, sparking ideas that could transform the academic world.
Through dynamic group discussions, we'll tackle how to keep our energy up (goodbye fatigue!), measure success with pinpoint precision, and when to revamp or halt projects. You'll also slip into the detective's role, decoding the subtle art of collaboration and co-creating a snazzy infographic that distils our collective wisdom into a handy guide.
Speaker
Dr Caroline Ang
Director Of Operations, Institute For Mathematical Innovation
University Of Bath
The role of the research enabler in fostering positive, productive partnerships
9:45 AM - 10:15 AMAbstract
Bringing together researchers to generate new ideas that lead to lasting, productive partnerships can be a non-trivial task involving a lot of behind-the-scenes work before, during, and after that first meeting. What can organisers do to engineer successful outcomes, and how should we define success?
Our session will provide an overview of examples from the presenters’ host institutions followed by facilitated group engagements to share activities conducted at other institutions.
We will introduce case studies of activities run at our institutions to develop:
Bottom-up, cross-faculty collaborations
Faculty-specific, funding call-focused consortia
Academic-Industry collaboration
In addition to sharing our own experiences, we will learn about other activities from workshop participants, and reflect on what aspects of our endeavours are more, or less effective. As a group, we will discuss topics such as:
How to avoid facilitator, participant, and programme fatigue;
How to evaluate if an activity is doing what it was designed to do;
When to modify or stop an activity;
Who should take part?
Participants will gain a deeper understanding of effective ways to build partnerships; how to address different types of fatigue; more effective evaluation methods; and an appreciation of our role as research enablers in the partnership process.
Our session will provide an overview of examples from the presenters’ host institutions followed by facilitated group engagements to share activities conducted at other institutions.
We will introduce case studies of activities run at our institutions to develop:
Bottom-up, cross-faculty collaborations
Faculty-specific, funding call-focused consortia
Academic-Industry collaboration
In addition to sharing our own experiences, we will learn about other activities from workshop participants, and reflect on what aspects of our endeavours are more, or less effective. As a group, we will discuss topics such as:
How to avoid facilitator, participant, and programme fatigue;
How to evaluate if an activity is doing what it was designed to do;
When to modify or stop an activity;
Who should take part?
Participants will gain a deeper understanding of effective ways to build partnerships; how to address different types of fatigue; more effective evaluation methods; and an appreciation of our role as research enablers in the partnership process.
Dr Laura Wisby
Research Development Manager
University of Bath
Co-Presenter
Dr Anne Priest
Programme Manager, Faculty of Science and Engineering
University of Bristol
Co-Presenter
Dr Jen Cusiter
Head Of CMVM Research & Innovation Operations
University Of Edinburgh
Sliding Doors: Co-creating interventions to turn your research leaders into star strikers
10:15 AM - 10:45 AMAbstract
In this workshop we are going to present a “Sliding Doors”* moment between a Principal Investigator and a Research Support Professional, then play out the impacts of the missed/taken opportunity.
We want to work as a group to investigate and summarise the key post-award implications when professional insights are not included or considered when complex interdisciplinary research projects are conceived.
Attendees will then work together to co-create a short interventional template to share with the ARMA community which summarises the key questions that PIs can ask research professionals and the positive impacts of engaging with us during idea generation and research design. We’ll then format this into an infographic and share by the end of the workshop, launching live at the conference.
* If you’ve not seen the film then please check it out! No jokes about the age of the presenters who are using this as a cultural reference.
We want to work as a group to investigate and summarise the key post-award implications when professional insights are not included or considered when complex interdisciplinary research projects are conceived.
Attendees will then work together to co-create a short interventional template to share with the ARMA community which summarises the key questions that PIs can ask research professionals and the positive impacts of engaging with us during idea generation and research design. We’ll then format this into an infographic and share by the end of the workshop, launching live at the conference.
* If you’ve not seen the film then please check it out! No jokes about the age of the presenters who are using this as a cultural reference.
Dr Sara Shinton
Director, Future Leaders Fellows Development Network
University of Edinburgh
Co-Presenter
Session Chair
Ms
Alisha Peart
Research Impact Manager
Northumbria University
