Attending the EARMA Annual Conference

In this blog, Lorna Wilson, ARMA chair-elect, and Sapna Marwaha, deputy chair of ARMA, reflect on their experience of attending the EARMA annual conference.

We recently had the privilege of attending the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators (EARMA) annual conference with over 1400 research managers from across Europe. EARMA represents Research Managers and Administrators (RMAs) in Europe.  It is an active member of the wider international RMA community and is a founding member of the International Network of Research Management Societies (INORMS). ARMA and EARMA regularly work in partnership and all INORMS members enable members of sister associations to attend their conferences at member rates through the ISARBS scheme, an incredibly valuable member benefit.  It was a great experience, reminding us how valuable international cooperation, networking, and knowledge exchange can be for our community.

Attending the conference gave us the opportunity to network with colleagues from around the world who work in our sometimes very niche space. These interactions are vital to learn about emerging policy areas, challenges, and opportunities in our field. Whilst we are based in different national contexts, we face similar challenges in our roles and organisations. Key topics of discussion at the conference included the professionalisation of research management, research security, open access, increasing competition and strategic responses, and effective engagement with funding programmes (particularly Horizon Europe).

The conference provided a platform for knowledge exchange, allowing attendees to share best practices, research findings, and innovative ideas such as a session on increasing the proportion of non-competitive funding streams. This sharing of knowledge not only benefits individual attendees, but it also helps advance the field as a whole. For example, we went to great session led by another INORMS member, SRAI in the US, about their innovative qualifications programme, and we’ll be following up with them to explore this further as there is lots ARMA could learn from their experience. By learning from each other, we can avoid duplicating efforts, build on each other’s successes, and tackle common challenges more effectively.

Another benefit of international cooperation is that it can lead to collaboration on joint projects and initiatives. By working together, we can pool our resources, expertise, and networks to achieve shared goals. This can lead to new business opportunities, partnerships, and even friendships. We’re really excited about the RM Roadmap initiative which EARMA are leading, and which ARMA will be contributing to as key Ambassadors for the UK. The project brings together community builders and leaders from countries across Europe to co-create the future of research management. The project kicks off soon and we’re looking forward to contributing to it and seeing how it progresses.

We had the opportunity to present at EARMA, sharing some of the great work that’s been done on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in ARMA. This included an overview of how we have changed how we lead, work done to make our recruitment processes more inclusive, changes to data collection and evaluation, and how we’re engaging with our community through training, consultation responses and work like the ARMA Research Culture Survey (2020). There was great attendance and the audience were really engaged, we got some great questions and comments from attendees, and we’ve contributed to a podcast led our Diversiunity colleagues, Jakob and Lachlan, who hosted the panel on diversity in research management in the session after ours.

We are incredibly grateful for the warm welcome we received in Prague. It is only by learning from each other and working together that we can advance our profession and effectively tackle the complex challenges we face today. We look forward to continuing to collaborate with professionals from around the world and welcoming them to the next ARMA conference.