ERCF project - Warwick Resilience Network

The workshop highlighted distinct disciplinary lenses through which resilience is conceptualised:

• Psychology:

  • Three-Part Model (Nature Mental Health):

    1. Resilient: Individual personality trait ("what it takes").

    2. Resilience: Outcome where an individual performs better than expected given a specific adversity.

    3. Resiliency: The dynamic process and protective mechanisms (e.g., parenting, peer support) that foster positive outcomes.

  • Role of Adversity: Resilience is only relevant when exposed to genuine adversity.

  • Bouncing Back vs. Growth: Distinction between returning to baseline functioning ("bouncing back") versus experiencing "post-traumatic growth" / "bouncing forward."

• Urban Planning & Social Sciences:

  • Views resilience through community systems, urban planning, and critical geography.

  • Treats resilience as a boundary object with varied meanings across fields.

  • Warns against uncritical adoption, noting that communities sometimes reject being labeled "resilient" when it is used to mask systemic neglect.

• Institutional Risk & Operations (Governance Assurance):

  • Focuses on strategic risk evaluation, business continuity, and incident management.

  • Operates a structured command structure for major incidents: Gold (Strategic) --> Silver (Coordination) --> Bronze (Operational).

• Project Management & Engineering:

  • Focuses on socio-technical systems, digital data (AI, digital twins), and building a proactive "collaborative culture" to manage project uncertainties.

• Global Health, Security, & Environment:

  • Ranges from macroeconomic health system shocks (e.g., donor funding cuts) to national security, state stability, and physical/environmental adaptation shorthand.

Participant Demographics

• Primary Roles: Assistant Professors (5), Associate Professors (3), Professors (2), Academic Technologists, Lead Engineers, Head of Risk & Resilience, Research Culture Managers, and Strategic Planning Leads.

• Top Departments Represented: Psychology (5 responses) and WMG (4 responses), alongside Economics, Education Studies, Engineering, Governance & Assurance, HVM Catapult, Medical School, Politics/PAIS, RIS, and WBS.

• Prominent Research Topics: Supply Chain (4 responses), Maths Anxiety, Decision-Making, Educational Technology, Global Health, Institutional Memory, National Security, Perinatal Health, and Positive Psychology.

Sentiment & Agreement Ratings

Participants rated core statements on a 1-to-5 scale (1 = Strongly Disagree, 5 = Strongly Agree):

Consequences of a Lack of Resilience

1. Organizational & Project Failure: System breakdown, operational chaos, project failure, and inability to function during disruptions.

2. Wellbeing & Human Impact: Severe burnout, decreased mental health, insecurity, and individuals falling through institutional cracks.

3. Strategic Decline: Loss of talent and institutional memory, reduced research innovation, and vulnerability to policy/funding shifts.

4. Financial & Reputational Damage: Direct monetary losses, supply chain collapse, and brand erosion.

Contact Luke for more detailed results.

Panelists: Neil Slattery (Professional Services), Prof. Dieter Wolke (Psychology), Dr. Georgios Kapogiannis (WMG). Host: Dr Luke Bellamy.

• Human Element vs. Infrastructure: * Dieter's Critique: Institutional models frequently over-invest in corporate structures, digital tools, and risk avoidance while neglecting the core driver of institutional resilience: its people (academics, staff, and students).

  • Neil's Response: Acknowledged that while plans provide useful frameworks, real-world recovery during prolonged crises relies entirely on human capability and wellbeing.

• Interdisciplinary Funding Barriers:

  • Structural funding silos penalize cross-disciplinary projects. For example, perinatal studies fall between the Medical Research Council (MRC - viewing school aspects as non-medical) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC - viewing health aspects as medical).

• Distinguishing Risk Management from Resilience:

  • Risk Management prioritizes foresight, quantification, and avoidance.

  • Resilience begins when risk or adversity actually occurs, focusing on adaptive capacity, coping strategies, and recovery.

• Controlled Risk-Taking & Simulation:

  • Rather than sheltering systems or individuals entirely, environments should facilitate safe risk-taking to build adaptive capacity. High-tech interventions (e.g., VR bullying simulations or flight simulators) allow safe scenario testing.

Critique & Feedback: Whilst the panel was diverse in professional backgrounds, they were not in lived experience, which would be important to capture in the future.

Group 1: Built Environment, Behaviours, & Community

• Relationships as Foundation: Physical space shapes behavior, but interpersonal relationships form the core of community resilience.

• Social Rules: Shared spaces require clear social structures/rules (e.g., minimum in-person days) to foster spontaneous interaction and reduce isolation among younger staff/students.

• Cultural Context: Cultural expectations prioritising absolute self-sufficiency can impede resilience by framing requests for help as weakness.

Group 2: Governance, Security, & Adaptive Capacity

• Explicit Costs: Adaptive capacity carries tangible costs—whether financial investments in business continuity, personal health/energy costs, or household discipline.

• Unintended Consequences: Interventions intended to solve one risk can inadvertently generate secondary conflicts or collateral impacts across connected systems.

Group 3: Crisis & Risk Communication

• Proactive "Muscle Building": Reactive firefighting must be replaced with proactive capability building (analogous to building physical muscle mass before health issues occur).

• Capitalistic vs. Sustainable Focus: Tackled tensions between short-term financial ROI/KPIs and long-term human/environmental sustainability during crises (e.g., protecting factory machinery vs. supporting affected workers during flood events).

Group 4: Digitization, AI, & Systems Resilience

• Predictive Decision-Making: AI and digital twins enable proactive scenario modeling (e.g., predicting flood impacts instead of relying solely on physical barriers).

• Citizen Science: Digital platforms empower local populations and staff through active participation, data co-creation, and localized agency.

Before defining network outcomes, the group explicitly integrated critical theory perspectives:

• Avoiding Uncritical Positivity: Resilience should not be treated purely as an unquestioned "good."

• Devolution of Responsibility: Critical geography and social sciences warn that resilience rhetoric can be weaponised by institutions or state actors to shift responsibility for systemic failures onto vulnerable individuals.

• Western/Colonial Biases: Frameworks must avoid imposing rigid, Westernised definitions of adaptation that ignore local contexts, historical factors, and cultural nuances.

To build an enduring institutional presence, the WRN agreed upon the following strategic framework and immediate operational steps:

Shared Language & Categorization Framework

1. Pillars: Categorise research and initiatives around People, Process, and Technology (PPT).

2. Scales: Map concepts across Micro (Individual), Meso (Organizational/Community), and Macro (Societal/Systems) levels.

Key Network Initiatives

• Termly Seminar Series: Host termly knowledge-exchange sessions featuring 15-minute cross-faculty talks structured around the PPT framework to build vocabulary alignment.

• Peer Pairing / Mentoring Scheme: Match members across departments to encourage peer learning outside formal meetings.

• Centralized Digital Hub: Establish an accessible website showcasing projects and funding streams, paired with an active Microsoft Teams channel for ongoing discussion.

• Operational Integration: Partner directly with central Professional Services (Risk & Resilience) to apply academic findings directly to university operational procedures.

• Inclusivity: Expand network scope to explicitly include PhD students, Early Career Researchers, and technical staff.

Governance Structure

• Agile Co-Leads: Maintain streamlined leadership for clear decision-making.

• Advisory Group / Steering Committee: Form a representative panel ("critical friends") spanning all three faculties, professional services, and varied career stages to ensure broad representation.

• Immediate Funding: Submit an updated bid to the Research Culture Fund incorporating the workshop's co-created outcomes and governance vision.