Highlights from our Special Interest Groups: A year of shared learning and community impact

As we look back over the past year, it’s clear that our Special Interest Groups (SIGs) continue to play a vital role in supporting and strengthening the ARMA community. From thought-provoking discussions to practical, member-led sessions, our SIGs have created spaces for connection, shared learning and professional growth.

This article brings together highlights from each SIG – showcasing key themes, standout activities and emerging priorities for the year ahead. Together, these insights demonstrate the depth and diversity of expertise across our network and the outstanding work our SIG Champions contribute throughout the year.

 

Arts and Humanities SIG

The Arts & Humanities SIG has continued to thrive amidst much change during 2025: we said fond farewells to our lovely co-champions, Eleanor Glenton and Helen Duffy, as they focus on new projects and we are currently recruiting new co-champions (watch this space!).

Our session at the June 2025 ARMA conference was, as ever, a wonderful occasion for networking and sharing best practice, this year around the complex facets of collaboration. A highlight of the year was our joint webinar with Senior Research Managers from the Wellcome’s Discovery Research team in February 2025, which followed on from an October 2023 joint webinar in the style of ‘you said, we did’ to best support and engage arts and humanities researchers. (Slides, summaries and recordings of the events can be found on the Arts & Humanities SIG site.)

Responding to our SIG members, in 2026 our plan is to hold more informal drop-ins to connect further with the A&H community as well as pursue joint SIG events featuring recent AHRC award-holders.

 

Audit and Compliance SIG

The Audit & Compliance SIG has held monthly drop-ins, talking about a range of pertinent issues from the restrictions on US federal funding to foreign sub-awards and finances and audit in the Horizon Europe Guarantee scheme. We regularly share email updates on our mailing list, and we hope to hold a session at next year’s ARMA conference in Harrogate – watch this space!

 

Ethics and Governance SIG

In 2025 The Ethics and Governance Special Interest Group (SIG) bid farewell to one of our valued Champions and extended a warm welcome to Ramon Statache and Tegan Colman as our new SIG Champions. Throughout the year, we hosted a series of informative drop-in sessions covering key topics such as Social Media, NHS Permissions, Student Research, Animal Research, and Data Governance. These sessions provided an open forum for discussion, guidance, and knowledge sharing, helping colleagues navigate complex ethical and governance challenges. Looking ahead, we are excited to continue offering these drop-in sessions into 2026, with plans to expand the range of topics to ensure ongoing support and engagement across the community. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to making these sessions a success—we look forward to building on this momentum in the year ahead.

 

EU and International SIG

In 2025, the EU & International SIG ran several drop-in sessions, as well as a well-attended session at the ARMA Conference in Edinburgh in June. Regular drop-in sessions featured a guest speaker presenting for 15–20 minutes, followed by a moderated Q&A and discussion led by one of the SIG champions. Topics covered included various aspects of EU funding mechanisms and opportunities, current research policy in China, and building international partnerships. At the ARMA Conference, we ran a full session on the current international funding landscape and explored how AI can be used to access and interpret it. We have also recently connected with the new Trusted Research SIG and plan to hold joint events next year. In addition, we will continue updating the group on EU funding leading to the new framework programme in 2028, while also expanding our drop-in sessions to highlight other regions.

 

Global Majority SIG

The ARMA Global Majority Special Interest Group (SIG), launched in June 2024, has focused this year on creating spaces for dialogue and professional growth. Key highlights included the first informal virtual drop-in session in May 2025 to shape the SIG’s direction, an in-person networking session at the ARMA Conference in June 2025, our biggest talking point, where members connected and shared ideas for future initiatives, and an online session in October 2025 spotlighting Imperial College London’s reverse mentoring programme, which sparked interest in inclusive leadership strategies. Looking ahead, the SIG will host an online planning drop-in in January 2026 and a flagship event in March 2026 at King’s College London, funded by SIG Innovation Funds. This celebration will feature expert-led workshops, a keynote speaker, and networking opportunities designed to foster skills, share best practices, and build a more inclusive research support community.

 

Meta-Research SIG

The meta-research SIG undertook a range of activities in 2025, driven by growing attention towards this field following the UK government’s establishment of the Metascience Unit and UCL’s hosting of Metascience 2025, which attracted approximately 800 delegates.

In February 2025, Chris Daley (SIG co-champion) participated in a sandpit event jointly hosted by the Metascience Unit and UKRI, where he collaborated with academic colleagues to explore how administrative data can be analysed to generate insights into the impacts and outcomes of funder policies, programmes and processes. Chris subsequently partnered with incoming ARMA Chair Grace McConnell to present at Metascience 2025 on how RMAs can be viewed as practitioner metascientists.

At the ARMA conference, the meta-research SIG conducted ‘live’ metascience by examining results from a pre-conference survey on RMA attitudes towards metascience. A short report based on this survey will be published in 2026.

 

Open Research SIG

The ARMA Open Research Special Interest Group continues to provide a supportive, community-focused group for ARMA members whose roles involve promoting and supporting open research at their organisations. The SIG hosted eight drop-in sessions throughout 2025. Some of these had specific discussion topics while others were open for members to freely discuss anything that they were dealing with at that time. At the latter sessions, topics arising for discussion ranged from technical and compliance issues to matters of culture and strategy. In 2025, approaches to rights retention, open access block grants, funder compliance, related community events, opportunities for sector engagement, licensing, and spotlighting of open research practices and successes were all discussed. A particularly lively session came early in the year, in January, when the REF 2029 Open Access Policy was discussed, with members sharing questions, comments and concerns relating to deposit, access, and licensing requirements of the policy, as well as policy exceptions. The SIG also benefited from a presentation from Dr Neil Jacobs on the UK Reproducibility Network and its Open Research Programme. Looking ahead, the SIG will run sessions in 2026 focusing on members’ most substantial priority areas (informed by a recent survey), which include measuring and maximising the impact of open research, open research in research assessment, and AI and open research practices.

 

Post-Award SIG

In 2025 the Post-Award SIG welcomed two new Champions who supported consistent community activity through monthly drop-in sessions. These have been well-attended and have provided a valuable forum for lively discussion and peer support. Looking ahead to 2026, the group’s focus is to maintain this level of member engagement as well as establish and grow a shared repository of best-practice documents and templates. This initiative aims to eliminate the duplication of effort across institutions, allowing members to adapt existing tools rather than creating them from scratch. Additionally, the SIG hopes to grow these discussions by hosting a dedicated Post-Award session at the next ARMA Annual Conference.

 

Postgraduate Research SIG

We welcomed the opportunity to collaborate across Special Interest Groups (SIGs) at the 2025 ARMA conference. The topic of inclusive research cultures touched on the huge range of great work across institutions and provided an opportunity to highlight how research culture has created more opportunities to create meaningful change for Postgraduate Research (PGR) in a more holistic way outside the traditional silos of Research and Education. Our drop in sessions remain a valued part of our community, offering opportunities to network and share approaches and practices and ask questions on any PGR topic. This is particularly appreciated by institutions with smaller PGR populations or where support is fragmented. We also welcomed colleagues from JISC to discuss Artificial Intelligence and PGR – a hugely informative session with a wide ranging Q and A  – we expect this to be a topic that we will return to in the future.

 

Research Contracts SIG

This year the Research Contracts SIG led on the dissemination and launch of the new Brunswick Collaboration Agreement Template, in collaboration with the Russell Group Contracts Leads who drafted the revised agreement. This kicked off with a launch event webinar attended by 300 people, as well as a slot at the Edinburgh Conference.

The SIG has worked with ARMA to establish a cross-sector representative contracts working group which will launch in the coming weeks and will act as custodian for the Brunswick suite of resources going forward.

In addition, the SIG relaunched the monthly drop-in sessions for contracts colleagues which has been seen as a useful, informal discussion group.

Next year will see the full implementation of the contracts working group, continued drop-in sessions, an in-person event for artificial intelligence in contracting, and more!

 

Research Development SIG

The Research Development SIG held a number of well attended online sessions including three drop-in sessions, a ARMA 2025 conference insights session and a funder’s perspective Q&A. This was the first time that the SIG has been able to offer an event that brought funders together to discuss topics important to those working in research development. The panel of four discussed the challenges working for funders, as well as their career journeys and wider issues in the sector. The SIG also ran an in-person conference session in Edinburgh that focused on five themes (working with funders, contributions to other services, non-traditional peer review, knowledge sharing and funding sustainability). The session provided attendees with the opportunity to network and have structured discussions on a variety of topics. A SIG co-champion also contributed to a joint conference session with Research Culture in which the perspective from researcher development was given. As one of the largest SIGs at ARMA, 2025 saw the creation of a wider research development SIG consultation group with the aim of bringing a more targeted, focused and relevant program of event topics to 2026. Several drop-in sessions and panels are currently being planned for 2026 along with a submission to the 2026 ARMA conference for another SIG session.

 

Research Evaluation SIG

In January, the Research Evaluation SIG welcomed two new co-champions, James Wilson (University of Bristol) and Urszula Pawlicka-Deger (Wellcome Trust). We held three online drop-in sessions for ARMA members this year. The first two focused on the intersection of research culture and research evaluation, covering new tools and approaches for assessing research cultures and the work of the TIER (Towards an Inclusive Evaluation of Research) group within CoARA. At the ARMA Conference in Edinburgh, we hosted a café-culture workshop on recognising and rewarding research professionals and we co-hosted a session on creating and maintaining positive research cultures. Our final online drop-in session of the year explored randomisation and lotteries in research funding, with invited speakers from the British Academy, Wellcome Trust, and the Research on Research Institute. Alongside this, we have continued to work closely with our colleagues on the Research Impact SIG in drafting a white paper on automated and genAI tools for impact assessment. Conversations are still ongoing, and we look forward to picking up this rapidly evolving topic with our members in the new year. We have also submitted abstract for the ARMA 2026 Conference in Harrogate.

 

Research Excellence Framework (REF) SIG

Throughout 2025, the ARMA REF Special Interest Group played a key role in supporting the sector through an evolving and often uncertain REF 2029 landscape. The SIG delivered eight well-attended drop-in sessions addressing major talking points including REF preparation in a changing environment, Codes of Practice, Contributions to Knowledge and Understanding (CKU) guidance, AI and digital technologies in REF preparation, and the implications of the REF reset. In addition, an interactive session at the ARMA Annual Conference provided valuable space for peer reflection and shared learning around the lived experience of REF pressures. High levels of ongoing Jiscmail engagement further demonstrated the SIG’s role as a trusted forum for shared interpretation, practical problem-solving and collective sense-making. Looking ahead, the SIG will focus on supporting members through post-reset adjustments, emerging policy developments and embedding responsible research assessment principles in REF preparation.

 

Research Impact SIG

The Impact SIG has maintained its high level of engagement with the Impact community in 2025. The Impact SIG delivered a highly engaging conference session, “Craft Your Impact Village,” attended by 76 delegates. The session invited participants to respond creatively to prompts exploring how resilience to threats might be built into research impact ecosystems. The SIG also supported the Open Research SIG in delivering “Leveraging Open Research for Greater Impact and Engagement,” attended by 38 delegates.

The Impact SIG continued to run drop-in sessions throughout the year and maintained ongoing debate and responded to member concerns through the email list. A recent session on maintaining momentum during the REF pause included speakers from Health Sciences University, Durham University, and the University of Brighton. Discussion centred on strategies for preparing REF impact case studies, including approaches to data collection, engagement activities, and website updates, while participants addressed challenges related to guidance uncertainty and potential last-minute changes. The consensus was that it remains business as usual during the pause. Following a joint drop-in in December 2024, the SIG Champions have also collaborated with the Research Evaluation SIG to explore the practical capabilities and ethical implications of AI tools being developed by commercial suppliers to evaluate research impact, highlighting potential risks and opportunities for sector engagement with developers. The initial outcome of this work will be an article for ARMA Insights, with further work planned in 2026.

The SIG Champions have represented ARMA at national policy forums including Research England’s ‘deep dive’ sessions on REF2029 Engagement and Impact and the Bureaucracy Review Reform and Implementation Network (BRINN) impact working group. BRINN was established following the Tickell Review to coordinate sector-wide efforts to reduce research bureaucracy, and ARMA’s involvement reflects the insights that research managers and administrators can contribute to system-level reform.

The SIG Champions have also operated as advocates bridging the practitioner community and sector bodies, including coordinated escalation of sector concerns, feedback on emerging guidance, support for ARMA’s strategic engagement with funders and senior stakeholders. Continued direct engagement with members of the Research England REF Team enables the SIG to act as an intermediary on behalf of the ARMA community, contributing to national REF discourse and policy development.

 

Research and Innovation Culture SIG

In 2025, the Research and Innovation Culture SIG held three drop-in sessions for ARMA members and led a parallel session at the ARMA Conference in Edinburgh. In February, our first drop-in of the year invited attendees to reflect on their role as agents for change within the R&I system. Discussions highlighted the value that specific research culture roles within universities can bring but noted with caution that real culture change comes from everyone, not just one or two specific leads. February’s conversation also touched on the myriad of Concordats now available that are designed to have a positive impact on R&I Culture. This sparked further work for the SIG looking at Research Culture Action Plans and evaluation methods. Our drop-ins in July and October explored this theme further with several members sharing insights from their own institutional practice and a couple even willing to share their institutional action plans themselves (these can be found on the SIG’s page of the ARMA website). After a successful application to the SIG Innovation Fund, we are now planning an in-person event on Wednesday 25 March 2026 at Durham University with invited guest speakers to explore evaluation frameworks, learn from different experiences, and collaborate to develop actionable evaluation strategies. We will capture the outcomes of this session for next year’s ARMA Conference. In addition, we are also working on the next iteration of the ARMA Research Culture Survey – keep an eye out for your invite to take part.

 

Research Information and Systems SIG

The newly established Research Information & Systems SIG has had an encouraging start, bringing together colleagues from across the sector to explore both the research information and research systems landscapes. Our inaugural online session attracted strong participation, with members identifying interoperability, data quality, and the effective use of research intelligence as shared priorities for the sector. Early discussions revealed how fragmented systems, inconsistent data flows and varied analytical maturity affect everything from strategic decision-making and research insight to operational workflows and REF2029 preparation. These findings are helping shape our programme for the coming year, which will include further online sessions, an in-person workshop and a collaborative submission to ARMA 2026. The SIG aims to create a practical, vendor-neutral space for peer learning, community-driven insight and shared approaches to improving research information and systems across diverse institutional contexts.

 

Trusted Research and Safer Partnerships SIG

The Trusted Research and Safer Partnerships SIG launched earlier this year and has already hosted two engaging sessions. The first session provided an opportunity for SIG Champions to introduce themselves, connect with members, and explore topics of interest for future discussions. The second, co-hosted with the EU & International SIG, focused on experiences of collaborative working between research and international teams to implement effective research security processes, fostering open discussion in a safe space. Looking ahead, the SIG aims to continue building a community of practice around trusted research and safer partnerships, with further sessions designed to support knowledge sharing and collaborative problem-solving.

 

If you would like to learn more about our 17 Special Interest Groups and meet other research management professionals with similar interests, click here.