1
Researcher development from the inside: a departmental champions perspective
V.Goodship, WMG, University of Warwick
This paper details the process of how researchers at one university department, took charge of their
own researcher development. It details the background, history and progress so far and covers
development from conception and initial Roberts funding, through to the present where an ever
evolving researcher development plan has been absorbed into the departments research
infrastructure.
The idea
The story begins as with most stories, with a stroke of luck; to be operating at a moment of perfect
timing at University of Warwick. The first key moment was the split of what traditionally had been
the engineering department into two distinct departmental units namely WMG and Engineering. The
second was the availability of Roberts’s money to individual applicants and to departmental
applications through the University’s Learning and Development Centre (LDC). As a new department,
there was a transition period taking place at WMG that came with departmental independence.
There was the setting up of new departmental committees and a more academic and developmental
focus into what had traditionally been and still is a very outward looking and growing department in
WMG. As a long serving contract researcher within this system, and at a sufficient level to be on the
alert to funding, the potential benefits of this money for developing from within quickly drew my
attention. This was a subject I had begun to consider in earnest a year before, as my own
perspective had moved from delivering research itself into a more introspective and deeper
exploration of the mechanisms of the research process and my boundaries and responsibilities
between training, delivery and management of research. I had previously edited a journal of papers
authored by my own postgraduate students as a first exploration of my own role in their
development as researchers. It became clear; there was a major gap in provision in my department
between their transitions from postgraduates to that of potential academic members of staff. Ideas
to fill this gap naturally followed. The one that initially stuck is that we as researchers had enough
key skills between us to be able to train each other. We just needed an environment in which to
‘play’.
As a new department WMG was able to submit a departmental Roberts funding application. The
internal climate at WMG was a very positive one, as this initiative lined up beautifully with both
human resources who were charged with delivering people based goals and the academic director
charged with delivering research deliverable goals. So the benefits that could be delivered to
researchers also delivered to both WMG and LDC remits to create a win-win. Having this buy-in was
crucial. Also, and perhaps vitally for longer term embedding, it did not need to be an academic
member of staff to front the bid; as an experienced female contract researcher, I was already aware
of many of the issues that were likely to be raised by my colleagues.
A 2K grant to cover ten initial researcher events was approved and the WMG Researcher Forum
went from conception to reality. My 2K ‘food grant’ was greeted with amusement by my research
colleagues, who could not believe I had actually got money to seemingly just feed them. The fact I
2
was feeding them however, turned out to be one of key ingredients of successes in embedding the
initial Forum concept. Having got the money, I now realised that I had actually better deliver
something!
The delivery
From the very beginning I excluded all line management (academics) from my meetings, to ensure
the researchers did not feel censored and to ensure they knew this was theirs. This early period of
the Forum can best be thought of as the ‘kitchen sink’ period. I literally threw all sorts of time, ideas
and theories at the problem. I held a series of lunches and breakfast sessions and simply let the
researchers talk to each other. They were very unstructured, sometimes quiet and sometimes noisy,
sometimes we had speakers, sometimes not, but the very fact we were sitting in a room and eating
together was very helpful in terms of there being some kind of focal point for ice breaking. Naturally,
over time, their research and problems would come up as researchers chatted. I listened to the
researchers as a group in this setting, but I also did a series of one-on-one sessions, and here the
focus often changed. I quickly learnt four things.
Just because researchers say they want something, it doesn’t mean they want it.
Every researcher is different and there is no one size fits all solution.
One-to-one meetings elucidated far better feedback in most cases than the group sessions because
researchers needed to feel they could talk confidentiality.
Don’t try to organise any event in December!
The breakfast (bacon sandwich) sessions held at 9am every month proved to be the most popular
and enduring of these early events and one that we still use now. The format of these meetings has
now evolved from within, initially I did everything – the researchers just came and went. Now the
Chair swaps with each meeting and that person books food, organises a room and invites everyone.
The theme of the meeting is up to them. It is now (a bit) more serious, the benefits to everyone have
become more obvious – the importance of the need to talk in research is better understood, the
team is tighter, the atmosphere is friendlier and crucially PI bad practice that had pervaded
untouched in some individuals has started to be rejected from within the researcher system itself.
People feel more able to air their views, albeit in a confidential setting, expand their horizons and try
new things. Leadership itself has taken a firmer focus for the researchers, especially when they feel
there is a lack of it!, and it has also been recognized that leadership training needs to start earlier in
a researchers career.
And ongoing…
A further development at WMG has been the creation of a WMG peer to peer internal mentoring
scheme. It runs along the same lines and rules of engagement as the main university mentoring
scheme, but is for research staff. It runs entirely confidentiality, unless the participants themselves
wish to declare themselves being mentees. (We have only one participant who is happy to do this.)
The mentee asks for a specific mentor through the co-ordinator, who approaches the mentor to
check their interest in participating. Once agreed the pairing simply get on with it. There have been
no issues or problems with this scheme; it seems to work very well.
3
Moving the researchers as a group to share the Forum load has to a point being successful, however
to take more personal responsibility as individuals is still one on which work is needed. Too often the
focus remains on what WMG can do to develop them and not empowerment on how they can
develop themselves. However, there is always exceptions, and the future leaders clearly identify
themselves within this group. From this initial system a whole series of individuals have been
encouraged to apply for and receive Roberts money, their first taste of the grant system, providing
WMG with a boost in incoming development money for a range of internal workshops, travel
opportunities to businesses and academic meetings, and a journal club. In the time it has run
participating PhD students have become researchers and researchers have become Assistant
Professors, all having grown up with the Forum in place. The Forum was also written in the
departments Athena SWAN application with a commitment to support it longer term.
This year I was also asked (and supported by the LDC to do so), to attend the Vitae International
Conference on Researcher Development in Manchester. This validated that what I was doing was
aligned with researcher development internationally and not just at a departmental level. It allowed
me access to a tremendous range of people from developers to vice-chancellors from a variety of
international universities and gave me further impetus to continue to explore these issues.
Given the clear need for empowerment, both leadership and creativity have been recognised as key
features for extra internal provision at WMG. An internal course on creativity has previously been
run by the Forum, albeit with a limited scope for one focus area of research, but this proved popular.
To further develop this theme the next development is to create a ‘Baby Board’ environment to train
and encourage strategic thinking and creativity in a peer led safe environment. Again there has been
management buy-in to help create the right environment for encouraging researcher development
and department wide nominations have been made for researchers to participate in this scheme.
Only time will tell whether this initiative will succeed. However, none of this would have been
possible without the support provided by the LDC and the Leadership team at WMG and I would like
to thank for allowing me to go on this exciting but wholly unexpected journey.