The Creating Knowledge update from the February 2018 Leadership Bulletin
Creating Knowledge – Professor Roger Eccleston
Transforming Lives sets clear ambitions for developing our research and knowledge exchange (KE) activities. Our aspiration to be the ‘leading applied university’ sets some clear objectives. To be leading, our research and KE should be world class in our chosen areas of expertise and our research performance in key measures (income, research power, GPA, REF performance) leading amongst our competitor set. To be leading and applied it must also demonstrably deliver social, economic and cultural impact and to do so better and more innovatively than our competitors.
Together with the Assistant Deans for Research, the Director of the Research & Innovation Office, the Director of the Doctoral School and other colleagues, I have been drafting a Creating Knowledge Implementation Plan (CKIP) intended to deliver our strategic objectives. The CKIP has been reviewed by the Creating Knowledge Pillar Board and the University Leadership Team. Over the next few weeks I will be consulting faculty leadership teams and faculty creating knowledge boards and sharing the CKIP more broadly at Transforming Lives sessions and dedicated staff meetings.
This CKIP focusses on the following six goals.
1. Establish 3-5 research platforms
2. Build a strong research and knowledge exchange culture
3. Increase research and KE income
4. Deliver economic, social and cultural impact
5. Ensure research enriches student learning and translation into practice
6. Achieve an excellent result for REF2021 & KEF
We have excellent research and KE across the University. The proposed research platforms will build upon our areas of excellence to establish foci for research and KE in which we are, or have the potential to be, world-class. The platforms will not be an alternative to research groups, centres or institutes and will not be new organisational structures. They will provide fora for conversations that link disciplines and encourage collaboration and give our research a clear external profile; they will put us in a strong position to address funding opportunities at scale and join (and, where appropriate, lead) consortia. They should be visible to, understood by and broadly owned by staff and students and act as a framework on which to encourage and develop a strong institutional research culture and the development of research and scholarly activity in staff.
As I share the CKIP over the next few weeks, I will say more about the characteristics of and criteria for the research platforms and how they will be identified.
