Ongoing Research Culture Projects
Below are details of the awarded ERCF projects for 2022-23. These projects are currently in progress, and will be completed by August 2023.
Name |
Department |
Project Title |
Description |
| Dr Saadia Gardezi | Politics & International Studies | Visual identification with Partition history through Virtual Reality and traditional animation | This PhD project brings a virtual reality immersive experience “Child of Empire” and animated shorts about lesser-known narratives of Partition and empire “Lost Migrations” to the University. Community participation and engagement will provide greater understanding of the political “visual” identification of viewers and what they feel this means for their political and social identity in the UK. |
| Dr Kathryn van De Wiel | Faculty of Arts | Facilitating a Pathway for Arts Research Impact in the School Sector |
This project will enable the Faculty of Arts to establish channels for collaboration and co-creation of research with local school communities, through a ‘hub’ or ‘centre.’ This will also benefit those from widening participation backgrounds, by supporting a more diverse pipeline of future students and researchers. |
| Dr Cerys Currie | WMS | Ambassadors for Better Research Culture, Gibbet Hill programme 2022-23 | This project will provide events and resources to understand and improve research culture at Gibbet Hill (GH), combining ground-up fact finding with top-down engagement to improve the laboratory environment for all staff and students. This will build on a café culture project in 2022 and catalyse a ‘culture shift’ at Gibbet Hill. |
| Dr Susan Burrows | Physics | Showcasing Physics research | This project will create a video starring researchers within the physics department at Warwick, across all research clusters, encouraging under-represented groups to consider such a career and thus provide a small step to addressing the issue of a ‘leaky pipeline’. |
| Professor Anne Gerritsen | History | Supporting History ECR monographs | This project will facilitate a ‘manuscript workshop’, which will have a significant impact of ECRs within this department and also providing a model which could be adopted more widely going forwards. |
| Dr Tammy Thiele | Education Group | Social Mobility Student Research Hub (SMSRH) | This projects aims to improve access to and participation in research for underrepresented groups by consolidating and enhancing the SMSRH as a continuing pipeline for students from underrepresented groups to undertake research in areas related to WP and social mobility. |
| Professor Margaret Low | WMG | STEM Connections: Empowering Researchers to Engage New Audiences | This project will empower academics at Warwick to share their own research stories with any audience, through training, mentoring and developing transferable skills, as well as creating a peer community and culture of support. It will build upon the previous pilot, refining the model and making it robust enough to share across the Warwick community. |
| Professor Georgia Kremmyda | Engineering | Towards a Warwick STEM R&D People and Culture Hub: Empowering people’s voices | This project will enable a virtual pavilion of networking, collaboration and sharing good practice to promote and advance women in STEM in particular. It will celebrate and showcase impactful research by underrepresented groups and produce material to raise awareness and further this aim. |
| Professor Elena Korosteleva | IGSD | Sustainable Development in a VUCA-world: a transdisciplinary outlook (SUS-DEV) | This project will launch a sustainability training school for ECRs, in collaboration with Warwick's international strategic partnerships. It will provide skills and knowledge and build a transdisciplinary network of ECRs focusing on sustainable development. |
| Dr Reinhard Maurer | Chemistry | Enhancing the PhD experience in Chemistry by boosting the cohort experience and skills training | This project aims to create a sense of community in the Chemistry PGR population through new activities to improve the PGR experience and careers and skills training. |
| Dr Ursula Clayton | English | Academic Enrichment Programme for Refugees and Asylum Seekers | This project will conduct the first research-driven design and implementation of an on-campus pilot course to provide advanced English language support, including on academic study skills, for refugee and asylum-seeking young people. |
| Dr Fiona Fisher | IAS | NextGen PostDoc - Creating sustainable high quality postdoctoral training at Warwick | This project will review the content and delivery of the IAS training programme and explore models for delivering this across the entire Warwick PostDoc community. It will produce a toolkit - resources, methods and recommendations - which will allow departments to take the excellence of the IAS provision and create a bespoke programme for their own communities. |
| Professor Kirstie Haywood | WMS | Enhancing Research Culture through Beacon Internships: championing diversity and equitable access to clinical research for medical students | This project will enable internships providing accessible and tailored clinical research opportunities for students from five under-represented backgrounds to access academia: specifically, female and female-identifying, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ (PRIDE), neurodiversity, and widening participation, championing of diversity and equality of opportunities for medical students. |
| Professor Kirstie Haywood | WMS | Enhancing WMS’s Research Culture through Co-Production and Active Community Engagement. | This project will create an Enhancing WMS Research Culture roadmap in co-production with the WMS community, through a series of in-person Research Culture Cafes, the establishment of a WMS Research Culture Community, together with a supporting team and website. |
| Professor David Leadley | Physics/RTPs | Technician Led Outreach Demonstrators | This project will highlight the technical career pathway to younger people to provide a better understanding of what a technical role is and routes into the pathway, such as apprenticeships, through demonstrator exhibition pieces and outreach activities, ultimately ensuring a pipeline of technical talent with a greater diversity. |
| Dr Elizabeth Fullam | SLS | “Mind the Gap: moving from experience to action” | This project will implement initiatives in SLS to bridge the gap between ‘where we are now’ and ‘where we want to be’ to achieve an enhanced research culture vision, through defining the foundations of research culture, establishing core professional competencies and an SLS researcher developmental strategy and supporting well-being and a sense of belonging through seminars and 'research conversations'. |
| Dr Erin Gorsich | SLS | Publishing your first research article | This project will facilitate a writing workshop on publishing in Life Sciences that will cover background information on publication as well as facilitate the practice of publication. The workshop will provide peer support and feedback at each stage of the writing process. |
| Dr Sarah Bennett | SLS | Creating and supporting shared scientific resources | This project will encourage wider Shared Resource Laboratories to provide support and access to analytical instruments currently constrained within research groups which would benefit the wider UoW community, resulting in a positive change to Research Culture and improved data quality and reproducibility, sustainability and collaboration. |
| Dr Freeha Azmat | WMG | Improving access and participation in engineering research (IAPER) | This project will launch an internship programme specifically targeted at female UG and PGT students to improve access to participation in engineering-focussed research, providing increased opportunity to experience research projects for these under-represented students, and host a programme of invited guest lectures, with speakers from underrepresented backgrounds. |
| Dr James Burford | CES | Searching for a supervisor: Demystifying pre-application doctoral communications |
This project will develop resources to make the PGR recruitment process more transparent and thus assist students from underrepresented groups to navigate toward potential supervisors with greater confidence. It will examine the process of searching for a supervisor from the perspective of doctoral students in under-represented groups in order to produce recommendations which can help to reduce confusion and increase accessibility. |
| Dr Craig Carnegie | WMG | Addressing social mobility issues in STEM through the development of WMG’s Research Culture and contribution to the wider University of Warwick Community | This project will set foundations and a team in place to develop an employability hosting programme at WMG that can be implemented on demand and form a model for other departments, aimed at young people within our local community, to inspire future applications, improving access to and participation in research. |
| Dr Anita Khadka | WMG | Wider research community access to underrepresented researchers | This project aims to provide excellent networking exposure of the under-represented ethnic minority female researchers to academics who are leaders in their fields, supporting BAME female ECRs to boost their careers via mentorships and a challenge fund. |