Professor Kirstie Haywood (she/her)
Director of the National Centre for Research Culture and Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor (Research Culture)

A Professor of Health Outcomes, Kirstie has been an active and engaged member of the University for more than 15 years, with leadership experience across research, education, and equality, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) portfolios. Over the last six years she has demonstrated academic leadership and collaborative skills across numerous school, institutional, and external ED&I initiatives, including: as Warwick Medical School’s (WMS) first deputy Pro-Dean People; Athena SWAN leadership (regaining Silver at both departmental (chair) and institutional (core co-ordinating team) levels); and through community engagement, leading the co-production of a WMS values-driven research culture roadmap and action plan. Through international collaboration, she co-founded the interdisciplinary ‘Women – inspiring, supporting, empowering – in Resuscitation’(WISER) group, established to embrace research culture across this scientific community.

Kirstie has demonstrable experience in collaborative, interdisciplinary research on both national and international platforms with academics and public partners from North America, Australasia, and Europe. She has contributed to national quality standards, both European and American guideline development activities, and is regularly invited to present at international conferences. Her research has created world-leading contributions, informing research, policy, and practice. Kirstie is a physiotherapist by training.

Research profile and publications.

Adele Kenny (she/her)
Research Culture Officer

Adele is a Research Culture Officer in the National Centre for Research Culture working on a rage of projects that support Research Culture activities both at the University of Warwick and through the NCRC. She was co-PI on a 2023/24 Enhancing Research Culture grant from Research England, ‘Enhancing Warwick Medical School’s Research Culture: implementing a community co-produced roadmap’, which served to embed good RC practice initiatives identified by the school community. Building on this, Adele’s secondment has moved to a central RC role where an initial focus internally has been to conduct an audit of all projects funded by the Enhancing Research Culture grant from Research England with a view to share best practice across the University. Through the NCRC, Adele manages the NCRC Conversation Series to ensure wide ranging voices contribute to discussions in the wider community and supports preparations for the IRCC conference.

Dr Rika Nair (she/her)
Research Culture Manager

Although Rikas' background is in medical research (Microbiology PhD, Imperial College London), Rika has since translated her experience to enabling different disciplines and all stages of the research project cycle. Her transition to a research-enabling role came with an exploration of what is meant by research identities and culture. In a 2013 column published in Nature, Rika proposed that good research culture includes a wide network of roles that enable and even amplify excellence. A decade later, her experience as a research enabler (project management, bid writing, research development) has supported the view that it takes a diversity of roles to nurture thriving research. Rika’s current role is as Research Culture Manager at the University of Warwick, where her main responsibilities are developing and leading institutional research culture initiatives, including line managing administrative support for the newly launched Interdisciplinary Research Spotlights. Although Rika predominantly works on Warwick Research Culture activities, she works in partnership with the NCRC and curates a Research Culture Knowledge Exchange LinkedIn group, and is the Network Lead for the Research Culture Enablers Network.

Dr Marie Sams (she/her)
Head of National Centre for Research Culture

Marie is the Head of the National Centre for Research Culture, and leads on the management of the Centre, including the development of the NCRC strategic roadmap, operationalising its workstreams, and raising the visibility of research culture nationally. Projects within her portfolio include the initiation of a national research culture conversation series, and leading the International Research Culture annual conference. She has facilitated work in identifying institutional problem statements and shaping recommendations for improving wellbeing of early career researchers. Marie has 24+ years of experience in the higher education sector in professional service and teaching roles, and has worked on different European and international research projects aimed at improving higher education experiences. She is passionate in exploring the challenges and opportunities to support more women into leadership in higher education, which was the focus of her Doctorate in Business Administration.

Vicky Strudwick (she/her)
Head of Research Culture Partnerships

Vicky is Head of Research Culture Partnerships within the National Centre for Research Culture (NCRC) at Warwick and leads on developing partnerships and collaborations with universities, research organisations, industry, funders and publishers in the UK and beyond. Specific projects within her portfolio include the development of a national network of Research Culture leads at UK universities, and the implementation of a pilot multi-level positive action programme for Black researcher career development. With substantial experience of enabling international research collaboration, she has a keen interest in bringing together voices from different national, disciplinary and organisational contexts to enhance global research culture.

Michelle Tsang (she/they)
Graduate Management Trainee

Michelle is a Graduate Management Trainee at The University of Warwick. The Graduate Management Scheme is a two-year fast track leadership scheme designed to equip trainees with project management and leadership skills to tackle challenges the Higher Education sector faces and develop innovative and collaborative solutions. Michelle’s first of three placements on the scheme is with the Research Culture team. Working closely with the National Centre for Research Culture, Michelle is supporting on projects relating to Black researcher career development. This includes creating a database of positive action interventions across UK universities, grant funders and research organisations to promote Black research careers and implementing a network of Black researcher positive action programme leads to share best practice in developing interventions. Prior to the graduate scheme, Michelle was a student at Warwick, completing both her undergraduate and master’s degree in history.