Enhancing Research Culture projects 2023-2024

For 2023-2024, 11 projects from across the University shared £199,448 of Enhancing Research Cultures funding from Research England, provided to LJMU to develop and initiate activities to ensure the research system is made of talented and diverse skills, working in an environment that nurtures and empowers everyone to do their best.

Academic and professional staff were invited to submit applications by open call. The following projects were selected for funding:

Faculty of Arts, Professional and Social Studies

A Visiting Research Fellow position in the Centre for the Study of Crime, Criminalisation and Social Exclusion

Team: Will Jackson

Summary: To develop a fractional Visiting Research Fellow position in the Centre for the Study of Crime, Criminalisation and Social Exclusion to provide research mentorship to Early Career staff.

An awareness raising short film about a teen girl whose mother goes to prison

Team: Lorna Brookes, Caroline Smailes, John Maxwell

Summary: To make an educational short film about the effect of parental imprisonment on a teenage girl. Producing the film generates best practices for connecting external partnerships throughout LJMU’s internal ways of interdisciplinary working.

Disabled Researchers Network

Team: Lucinda Matthews-Jones, Ria Cheyne

Summary: A multi-year project to collate information about current policy and practice at LJMU and across the sector about Disabled Researchers’ experiences, and then create the Disabled Researchers Network to share experiences, develop new recourses, and inform the research environment, so all can learn from the resiliency, creativity, and innovation of Disabled Researchers.

Faculty of Business and Law

Serious Play

Team: Jane Dowson, Rosalind Jones

Summary: Training for staff to become ‘Serious Play’ facilitators and then begin a programme of six half-day collective planning and strategy implementation workshops.

Faculty of Health

Enhancing an inclusive, multi-disciplinary, translational and capacity building research culture in the Faculty of Health

Team: Marie Claire Van Hout, Mark Bellis, Cathy Montgomery, Sharon Schofield

Summary: Strategy development, consultation activities, a public expert lecture series, and a science communication internship.

Improving access to, and participation in, research from under-represented groups: piloting a Public and Patient Involvement Manager to coordinate coproduction activities

Team: Cathy Montgomery

Summary: Piloting a Public and Patient Involvement Co-ordinator role to facilitate co-production activities in the Institute for Health Research

Faculty of Science

Evaluation of the Thematic Doctoral Training Pathway pilot

Team: Ellen Dawson, Kehinde Ross, Victoria Sheppard, Julie Sheldon

Summary: A proof-of-concept study to evaluate the performance of LJMU’s Thematic Doctoral Pathway model in providing positive outcomes for PhD researchers.

Transformative Interdisciplinary Collaborations for Enhanced Research Culture

Team: Kehinde Ross, Ian Jarman, Ivan Olier, Sandra Ortega Martorell

Summary: Two five-day sandpit events to build interdisciplinary working between the Institute for Health Research’s Diagnostics and Therapeutics Network and the Data Science Research centre.

Professional Services

Sustainable Development Goals Reporting

Team: Lucy Day

Summary: To develop an annual report on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) progress across the University, co-ordinating data collection, benchmarking progress, and communicating SDG research vitality to internal and external audiences.

Public Engagement with Research Strategy

Team: Diana Leighton

Summary: Consultation and review of how to expand LJMU’s public engagement offer.

Technicians Survey

Team: John Trantom, Jason Boulter

Summary: Commission the National Technicians Development Survey to raise the visibility and recognition of technicians and to support the launch of a network for technical staff career development.