This network is to map, connect, and showcase the university's fragmented resilience-related expertise; amplify work from departmental schemes into a sustainable, inclusive, and interdisciplinary institutional network.
To promote your work and facilitate cross-departmental collaboration, we are building a directory of resilience researchers.
Open the attached PowerPoint template.
Select your preferred colour box (delete the others), fill in your details, input your relevant publications, projects, and resources.
Crucial:Save and return the file as a PowerPoint (.pptx) file along with a high-resolution head shot photo on the slide. We will extract the text to build the accessible web page.
Unify fragmented expertise spanning all three faculties, including departments like WMG, Psychology, Business, Engineering, Economics, Medical, Humanities, and more. Transitioning from the current arrangement of ad-hoc personal relationships into a visible, robust collaborative network.
Centre Warwick as an Institution for Resilience
Embed academic insights and strategic planning at the centre of Warwick's governance and academic activities. Developing cross-disciplinary interconnections and expertise to be a national leader in resilience thought, delivered through institutional action through governance decision making and high-impact multi-disciplinary research bids.
Elevate & Platform Talent
Provide visibility to PhDs, ECRs, and technical staff via an inclusive, flat structure, which enables all members to contribute, grow, develop ideas and contribute.
Background
Dr Luke Bellamy identified that parallel, uncommunicated resilience research was occurring within WMG. Upon consulting the interdisciplinary directory, he discovered substantial resilience research across other university departments and recognised a clear opportunity for collaboration. To address the persistent issue of siloed working across the university, he sought funding from the Enhancing Research Cultures fund. Although he lacked existing contacts outside his department, he reached out to Dr Evangelos Pitidis, a resilience researcher within the IGSD. Following widespread researchers identified from numerous departments, they submitted a joint bid. Their successful application provided the funding required to establish the Warwick Resilience Network.
The Future
Dr Luke Bellamy and Dr Marina Mendonca are working together for the next research culture funding round, seeking a larger funding pot to establish the Warwick Resilience Network more formally within the university with the aims of:
Supporting ECRs and technical staff through co-creation problem solving activities.
Establish an expert-led board of advisors for institutional resilience, raising the profile and experience of diverse resilience network members
Secure spotlight membership
Act as a strategic resilience research incubator for ideas and large interdisciplinary grants
Network Launch Event
Summary
The launch event workshop (30th July 2026) brought together academic researchers, professional services staff, and technical specialists from across the university to explore multidisciplinary perspectives on resilience. The event addressed research silos, explored disciplinary definitions, critically examined the term "resilience," and established a roadmap for future interdisciplinary collaboration and shared institutional governance.
Key Takeaway: Resilience is a dynamic, multi-layered concept spanning micro (individual/psychological), meso (organizational/community), and macro (societal/systems) levels. Successful network outcomes require balancing technical and risk management frameworks with a strong human-centric approach, critical theoretical awareness, and proactive cross-faculty collaboration.
The event served as an experimental, kick-off meeting designed to dismantle institutional silos and establish a foundation for the Warwick Resilience Network (WReN). By bringing together researchers, Early Career Researchers (ECRs), technical staff, and professional services across diverse departments from all three faculties, the workshop aimed to explore how different fields conceptualise resilience, identify shared ground between individual and systemic perspectives, and create an inclusive platform for future interdisciplinary grant opportunities and sustained collaboration.
Network Reach & Attendance
Current Membership: 85 members across diverse departments (including Psychology, WMG, Economics, History, Politics/PAIS, Global Health, Business School, Education Studies, and Central Governance).
Workshop Attendance: ~27 live attendees with 20 apologies (impacted by summer schedule/childcare, conferences, and illness out of 49 initial sign-ups).
The workshop highlighted distinct disciplinary lenses through which resilience is conceptualised:
MACRO LEVEL Global Health, Security, Environment, Nations
Resilient: Individual personality trait ("what it takes").
Resilience: Outcome where an individual performs better than expected given a specific adversity.
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.
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):
Statement
Mean Score
Key Distribution & Sentiment
"The term resilience is regularly misused"
3.5
High agreement (11 of 23 scored 4 or 5).
"Resilience is an understood concept in my field"
3.3
Moderate agreement (10 of 23 scored 4 or 5).
"The gap with resilience is in application, not theory"
3.2
Center-weighted (10 neutral [3], 8 agreed [4 or 5]).
"Resilience is a controversial term in my field"
2.5
Mostly disagreed (14 of 23 scored 1 or 2).
"Resilience and Sustainability are the same thing"
2.1
Strong disagreement (18 of 23 scored 1 or 2).
Consequences of a Lack of Resilience
Organizational & Project Failure: System breakdown, operational chaos, project failure, and inability to function during disruptions.
Wellbeing & Human Impact: Severe burnout, decreased mental health, insecurity, and individuals falling through institutional cracks.
Strategic Decline: Loss of talent and institutional memory, reduced research innovation, and vulnerability to policy/funding shifts.
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.
Key Panel Contrasts
Risk Management
Resilience
Focusing on foresight and avoidance
Systems, data, modelling
Coporate Structures & KPIs
Capacity to cope when exposed
Human-centric adaptation & Growth
Protective factors and learning
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
Pillars: Categorise research and initiatives around People, Process, and Technology (PPT).
Scales: Map concepts across Micro (Individual), Meso (Organizational/Community), and Macro (Societal/Systems) levels.
Shared Language Framework
People
Process
Technology
Micro Level
Individual / Psychological
Meso Level
Organisational / Community
Macro Level
Societal / Systems
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.
WReN Staff Profiles
(In Development)
Warwick Resilience Network Profile
Name
Dr Luke Bellamy
Dept. and Faculty
WMG, SEM
Role
Professional Researcher (Lead Engineer)
Core Focus
Industrial & Supply Chain Resilience
Relevant Publications, Projects & Resources:
Supply Chain Resilience Hub
https://supplychainresiliencehub.com/
Resilience Navigator
https://scrn.digitalsupplychainhub.uk/
Research & activities:
Dr Luke Bellamy is the Lead Engineer for Industrial Resilience within the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) team at WMG. He operates at the intersection of academic research and industry to support manufacturing supply chains. Luke co-founded the Warwick Resilience Network to foster interdisciplinary synergy across the institution. His high-impact technical work, delivered in partnership with the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, focuses on circular economy design, resource security and supply chains. By developing digital capabilities such as the Supply Chain Resilience Navigator and practical decision-support tools, Luke translates complex academic theory into robust, systemic solutions that deliver long-lasting industrial and societal impact.
