Event Details

A positive research culture is vital both to creating an attractive and creative place to work and to producing high-quality research.

Across the sector, a growing number of colleagues are being assigned the daunting task of developing a strategy for changing their institutional “research culture”.

Based on our experience of advancing research culture at the University of Glasgow since 2015, we will present how to plan for creating a more positive culture: how to avoid the temptation to solve everything at once, how to create a coherent programme that respects disciplinary differences, how to engage both senior university management and the academic leadership, how to balance top-down and bottom-up activities, and how to evaluate how you are doing.

Changing culture takes both patience and time, but it can be done. The aim of this workshop is for participants to identify three practical actions for improving research culture at their own institutions.

Speakers

Miles Padgett

Miles is a Royal Society Research Professor in Optical Physics at the University of Glasgow. During his five years as Vice-Principal for Research in 2014–2019 he championed how the support of early-stage careers combined with academic creativity could drive the research excellence agenda. Miles is the institutional co-lead for research culture and co-lead of the Lab for Academic Culture. It is the university’s belief that a better culture is not an alternative to excellence but is what will allow more of us to excel.

Miles.Padgett@glasgow.ac.uk
@milespadgett
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6643-0618

Tanita Casci

Tanita is the Head of Research Policy at the University of Glasgow. In collaboration with the PVC Research, she is responsible for delivering the institutional research strategy across all academic disciplines, which includes developing policies and projects that support research staff and students to succeed.

Since 2015, she has led the University’s programme of activity to advance research culture across the university’s >5,000 researchers. Tanita is the institutional co-lead for research culture and is the founder and co-lead of the Lab for Academic Culture.

Tanita joined the University in 2012 as the research manager of Glasgow Polyomics, a technology facility for the analysis of molecular ‘big data’ in biology funded by the Wellcome Trust. Previously she worked for 12 years as a commissioning editor in genetics and genomics for the Nature Publishing Group in London.

Tanita.Casci@glasgow.ac.uk

@tanitacasci

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1838-0027

Elizabeth Adams
Elizabeth helped to establish the University of Glasgow’s Lab for Academic Culture in late 2020, where she is now the strategic workstream lead for research culture, working on actions to progress support for careers, recognition of contributions, research integrity and the future of research assessment. She co-convenes the University’s Research Culture and Careers Group alongside Tanita Casci.

Prior to this, Elizabeth established and led the University’s Researcher Development team to deliver professional and career development opportunities for ~5,000 research students and staff across the Institution. Over a period of 13 years of developing researcher talent and leadership capacity, she looked for ways to have a positive impact on research culture – at the University of Glasgow and the wider sector – through training and development, communications, policy, conversations or other interventions. Elizabeth was the key point of contact for the University’s HR Excellence in Research Award, established the Glasgow Crucible, led a University-wide review of safeguarding researchers in fieldwork and was part of the UK writing group for the 2019 revision of the Researcher Development Concordat.

Elizabeth is a Chartered Manager with a PhD in Chemistry, and qualifications in coaching and mentoring (ILM) and learning and development (CIPD). She previously worked on Educational Projects for the Royal Society of Chemistry, moving to the University of Glasgow in 2008. She is a qualified cycling coach and mountain bike leader and brings experience of promoting diversity and inclusion in the outdoors and cycling, to support her work in academia.

Elizabeth.adams@glasgow.ac.uk

@ResearchDreams