With momentum building over the last few years, we wanted to explore what Research Culture meant to our diverse community at WMS. Understanding ‘what’ research culture means across our diverse community, and how it can be enhanced, seeks to ensure that we can all flourish and deliver the best quality, world-leading research that makes a real difference.

We want to provide a safe, inclusive, and supportive research environment for all, one where creativity and connectivity is nurtured. It is important that we recognise and reward diverse contributions to research and to support colleagues in feeling fulfilled by the work that they do … and to enjoy the journey!

We have engaged in active consultation with our community of staff and students and appointed a Research Culture Officer to support this work. We have delivered a planned series of semi-structured café events with our community to explore what Research Culture meant to them and to inform a future vision for Research Culture at WMS. We explored the challenges and opportunities associated with the existing research culture at WMS, to identify where we were doing things well, and to propose ideas to enable us to do better moving forward. This enabled us to develop our strategy here.

We have developed an Enhancing Research Culture Roadmap to chart the course for our ongoing Research Culture Development. This will be a living document, responding to the evolving needs of our community. We have developed a Community of Practice, bringing together those who are leading on Research Culture grants and those who sit on the central University RC Forum. We are working with change leaders across the University to instigate long-term change and to ensure growth in WMS Research Culture and in the quality of our research.

WMS have now launched their roadmap to deliver the Research Culture Strategy, please take a look at their pages for more information.