In this episode of #ResearchCultureUncovered, host Dr Emily Ennis talks with Dr Amy Mayfield (Lancaster University) and Dr Nicola Simcock (Newcastle University) about how maturity frameworks are helping departments move from good intentions to practical change.

What you’ll hear:

1. Why a “maturity framework” (name still up for debate!) helps complex organisations reflect honestly on where they are now and where they want to get to, without turning evaluation into yet another top‑down exercise.
2. Local first, institution-wide impact. Newcastle’s pilot runs the tool with units of different sizes to surface priorities, share what already works, and target support.
3. Different disciplines, different ways of engaging. Some users preferred quantitative responses, others qualitative – and yes, a stereotypical disciplinary split has happened! – but both routes generated useful, actionable insight.
4. Lancaster’s MERCI project (Maturity and Evaluation of Research Culture Initiatives) uses away day workshops and a simple “Why?” prompt to collect the richest qualitative feedback and to recognise distance travelled.
5. Alignment without overload. Both teams map areas to action plans and sector drivers (e.g., SPRE/PCE) so one exercise can inform unit‑level work, institutional narratives, and wider evaluation needs: saving time while building buy‑in.

Please note: we have had to edit much laughter out of this podcast, but felt adding in a laugh track might make things feel a bit too 90s sitcom. But please, laugh along with us!

🔗 Initiatives and outputs referenced in this episode

These are the items that will need links in your published show notes:

1. UKRN Recognising and rewarding open research toolkit
2. EDGE Tool (National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement)
3. Wellcome Trust, ‘What researchers think about the culture they work in’
4. Royal Society research culture work
5. PCE Pilot Report
6. SPRE – Strategy, People & Research Environment
7. CEDARS Survey
8. N8 Research Partnership
9. Wellcome Institutional Fund for Research Culture
10. Lancaster’s Research Culture work
11. Newcastle’s Research Culture work

This is Emily E, newest edition to and second Emily in the Research Culture Uncovered podcast. In this podcast, we uncover the diverse voices and initiatives building and transforming research culture both nationally and internationally. You may have already heard my Meet the Host episode, but if you haven't already, you'll find it linked in the show notes. As might become apparent in today's show, my episodes will be focusing on what research culture change might look like, if and how we can measure it and what models we might use for doing so. With that in mind, I'm delighted to introduce you to today's guests who, I think, are doing fantastic things not only in enabling research culture change, but in developing ways to measure how change feels. In no particular order, first we have Dr Amy Mayfield, Research Culture Manager at Lancaster University. Amy, can you please say a brief hello to the listeners so people can hear your voice?

Hello everyone, I'm Amy Mayfield, I'm from Lancaster University and thank you so much, Emily, for having me on the Research Culture Uncovered podcast today.

Thanks, Amy. Secondly, we have Dr. Nicola Simcock, Research Culture Manager at Newcastle University. Your turn now to say hello so listeners can hear your dulcet Yorkshire tones.

Hi, Emily. Thank you. I'm Nicola. I'm the Research Culture Manager at Newcastle and this is the first podcast I've ever done. So very excited to be here.

Well, I promise we'll go easy on you both. And thank you both for joining me here today. So a lot of this episode is probably going to really focus on reflection and reflective practices when it comes to research culture. So I thought we could start with a bit of a reflective question. So I wondered if you could each give us a bit of a history on how you came to doing research culture work. Maybe, Amy, you could go first.

Yes, okay. So back in 2012, I was completing the final year of my PhD, which was looking at how records are classified under the Freedom of Information Act, something completely different, when my supervisor and then associate dean of research for our management school told me about a part-time role that was opening up in the Faculty's Research Support Office, and that was looking at the impact of the Faculty's Research for REF 2014.

I remain immensely grateful for that opportunity, not just because I'd come to the end of my scholarship funding, so it was a big help in that final year, but because it opened my eyes to a whole new career path in professional services side of research and I haven't looked back since. I didn't realise it at the time, but it was actually the first dedicated professional services research impact role at the university and the knowledge and experience that I gained during that role then helped me to secure a later position as Faculty Impact Manager for Science and Technology. That was a of a new more strategic role and so I was able to use my knowledge from that previous experience to kind of ascertain what was needed in terms of structures, further roles, support, funding. I was in that role for a few years, learnt a lot and I wasn't necessarily, because I was very much enjoying it, wasn't necessarily looking to move role. But I saw the position of Research Culture Manager advertised and it was advertised initially as a secondment so I thought opportunity to learn something new and the more I kind of researched for that role and learnt about what had already happened in the sector, the report that the Wellcome Trust had done surveying 4,000 researchers across the UK, looking at the work the Royal Society had done looking at work of initial research culture strategies and action plans that had already come about from a few institutions. The more I kind of got really excited about it and could see the parallels as well from when I first started in Impact that it was something that we were already obviously doing but with funding and with things like REF, dare I say, as a driver and sort of that terminology around research culture, coming more to the fore. It felt like a real opportunity to make some change and to enhance things further and very, very similar from, when first started in those impact roles. So, yeah, applied successfully for the role. I've been doing it for about three years now and continue to this day to be so grateful to be working in this space with such wonderful colleagues and in such a diverse role with so many different areas. It's hard sometimes with just how much is going on in this space to, know, one of the biggest challenges to kind of do justice to everything. But yeah, that's kind of how I got into it.

Thanks so much, Amy. And yeah, it's a pleasure to have two research culture managers on one podcast because I think it really gives a flavour of just how diverse these roles are. So I guess maybe that's a good point for Nicola to come in and explain a bit about how she came to be where she is today.

Yeah, think similar to Amy, I've been a research culture manager for about three years now. But differently, this is my first professional services role in research. So before this, I was a research associate at Newcastle. So I held postdocs for about seven years after completing my PhD. And I think it's a really interesting question thinking about how this happened and all the things going on around it. But when I get asked about my career trajectory in general, I've always said throughout my time as a research associate, I was quite lazy, if I'm being perfectly honest, when I think about my career. I had some really supportive supervisors and they were always very laid back about, there'll be more funding, there'll be more projects, don't worry about it. And I really leaned into that, I think more than I perhaps should have done. And my final postdoc

My research was working with honeybees and it was on a honeybee chronic paralysis virus and my final postdoc working on that virus was over the COVID pandemic so it's very virus heavy inside and outside of work and it was during that postdoc I think I had the realisation that I didn't want to pursue a career in academia. I didn't see myself becoming an academic and I was a little bit stuck in knowing that while I really enjoyed the research I was doing I didn't really know what else there was for me and I'd had a lot of short-term contracts and at the time I was really, to be honest, running down the clock on my final contract thinking that perhaps, that threat of unemployment was going to give me the kick I needed to understand what it was I wanted to do. And then it was just sort of blind luck really that the Research Culture Manager role then was advertised. And when I saw the advert, I think it has to be probably the first advert I've seen where I met every single one of the essential criteria and the desirable criteria and I thought, this is perfect for me, this looks really good. And then in a really strange sort of almost Stockholm Syndrome response to academia, my next thought was, I've only got three months left on my contract, I'm so busy getting things wrapped up in the lab, it's a shame I don't have time to apply for this and I closed the advert. And then I had a friend, another postdoc, who was also coming to the end of her contract. And she emailed me the same advert and she said, this looks brilliant. I'd love to apply for it, but I've only got two months left in the lab and I don't have time. And I think that really hit me. And I thought, what on earth are we doing here? We're so busy running down our contracts, racing towards unemployment that we're putting off potentially our first opportunity of a permanent position. And so I applied and was lucky enough to get that. And one of the other things with that was the first Research Culture Manager position at Newcastle. I think that's similar for many institutions at that time. So of course, that makes me the best Research Culture Manager that Newcastle has had. We won't touch on the fact I'm also the worst but that's okay.

I love that story. don't know how much you've listened to the Research Culture Uncovered podcast, but there's a heavy bee content. Like it's so, you know, more, more honeybee propaganda from the research culture community. But thank you both for sharing your histories. And I think it is, it's interesting to see just how many academics there are in this field, both in terms of the skill set that I think having been a researcher brings to this work – some of the work that we do does tend to be research on research – but also reflecting the fact that some of us have lived through research cultures and, may or may not know it at the point where we're applying for the role, but then suddenly realise we've got a wealth of experience of different research cultures to bring to the work we do.

I mean, we're here today to talk about maturity frameworks, which I know you've both been focusing on, but for the purposes of our listeners, what exactly is a maturity framework and how different are the ones that you've each piloted in your institution? mean, maybe Nicola, you're the person to go to first, because I think you were one of the first institutions to start looking at maturity frameworks.

Yeah, in terms of a maturity framework for research culture, it's interesting that you said we were the first to look at this. I'm not so sure that we were because after we started working on a maturity framework for research culture, it's amazing how many other very similar forms of assessment and tool that you come across that being used at other institutions.

But in terms of what a maturity framework is, it is a form of assessment tool and it's usually used as of organisational level to assess and progress through complex change. So it helps organisations really think about where they currently are, their level of maturity in a particular area and where they want to get to in the future. So it really provides a structure to help them reflect in a particular area and

There are lots of different maturity frameworks out there, including some that do touch on relevant areas to research culture. some of the listeners might be familiar with the UKRN maturity framework, and this is for recognising and rewarding open research in research assessment. And I think that maturity framework in turn was inspired by the EDGE tool, a self-assessment tool created by the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement.

So there's lots of examples of where these tools are being used. And we thought this would be really useful in the research culture space because for anyone that has any familiarity with research culture, it is a huge complex area, lots of different layers to it. It means quite different things to different people. And when we think about reflection or evaluation, measuring progress, there's lots of different ways you can do this and it's really tricky to try and capture that in one space. And so we looked at these other existing maturity frameworks that were out there and we thought we could use this tool to create something for research culture. And it's interesting when we first started conversations about this, the first thing we decided is that we actually wanted a name change. We didn't think maturity framework exactly captured what we wanted. But we haven't found anyone that's proposed an alternative name yet, so we're still waiting. And I'd say we are more than happy if there's anyone listening thinks of a better name for this. We are very much open to change it. So what we did at Newcastle, we were thinking about all of the different things we're working on in terms of research culture. So when we started a few years ago now, the first thing we did was go out to our research community and we started consulting with them and asking them, what does research culture mean to you? What's most important? What do you want to see changed? And our research community, like many other institutions, is hugely diverse. Everyone thinks about this in a slightly different way and responded referencing different sort of themes and elements. And all of that consultation at Newcastle went into the production of our first research culture action plan.

And this is a hugely broad and ambitious document and it's because it reflects all of those voices. The consultations we did, I think it was well over a thousand people that fed into this. And so we started with the action plan, looking at those actions and the themes within it that we might want to think about in terms of reflection around research culture. We broadened out some of those different areas dependent on our areas of focus at the moment.

So we have top priority projects at Newcastle, areas that we've put project teams behind and we're really delving into to make better progress going forward. We also incorporated some of our external connections. So we were one of the institutions that were lucky enough to be awarded the Wellcome Institutional Fund for Research Culture. Our project was looking at creating inclusive leadership, psychologically safe and inclusive leadership. So that was an area that went into our maturity framework. And of course, the sort of elephant in the room, and I'm sure this will come up as we were developing this. is just about the time when the PCE pilot was being done. So for REF, the PCE pilot indicators coming out around that, we also considered those in the production of this tool. So we put it together and it's worth highlighting.

It wasn't just myself or a small group of us. We worked collaboratively with a whole host of colleagues, recognizing a lot of the things that we'd included. Our areas for action overlapped with other teams. So for example, we have an area for action on environmental sustainability, and we worked with our sustainability team to create the narrative around that. They're the experts in that area, and we wanted to include them and in producing this document with all these people, we've created a living authors list. We very much expect this to expand as we progress. So the first draft of the framework is essentially an Excel spreadsheet. We have areas for action down the left-hand side and then our maturity levels along the top. And these progress from embryonic, meaning not a lot has happened in this particular area. And there are four levels up to embedded, meaning things are going quite well. We've progressed to a really positive level in this area. And we've provided narrative around each of them. And in total, there are 18 areas for action. And what we've done at Newcastle, most of the frameworks that exist out there are being run at an organisational level. And we're really keen to run this at an organisational level. But actually, we're more interested in using this at a local level. So we have small groups.

We weren't exactly sure on the ideal group size to use this with and so we've commenced a pilot to try and understand what size of unit can work with this framework. Is it a research group? Is it a school? Is it a faculty? Or should it be done across the institution? And so we're piloting at the moment with three units in each of our three faculties, all different sizes, and we're really collecting a lot of evidence from this process to understand. Is it proving a valuable tool to those units? Is it allowing them to reflect on their research culture? Is it allowing them to prioritise what they think is most important now? We want this to be relevant and we want it to be timely. And is it providing a useful mechanism for us as a central team to work with those units in a positive way and support them most effectively going forward?

So when we created this, we wanted to be very open about it and share this. And we're happy to share with other institutions. And we really benefited from the fact that Newcastle is a member of the N8 so the eight northern research intensive universities get together often and we discuss our various research culture activities. And we're really keen to share this with the N8 and get a bit of feedback to see if we could improve it.

And with the idea that eventually when we do create an institutional level framework, we want to do this in collaboration with other institutions because there's a very real risk. If I write this framework and I fill it out, I can mark my own homework as the research culture manager. I of course want to say things are really good at Newcastle, but I want to be honest and I think I can be held to account better if I do that collaboratively with other institutions. So I was really pleased when Amy got in contact and wanted to use the framework that we created and develop it positively for Lancaster. I'll let Amy comment on how she's worked with what we produced here at Newcastle.

Okay, thanks Nicola. very similar sort of background really. So we had our, let's talk about research culture consultation conversations with our research community back in 2023, So we were getting to that point sort of a year on where we were looking at

how could we better measure the progress that's been made to date and do justice to all those different initiatives that we'd instigated off the back of those consultations and the action plan that had been in place for about a year as a result of that. So when the idea of the maturity framework came along it was really timely and in terms I don't know about a name change as such but at Lancaster we've been calling it the MERCI project, so that's the Maturity and Evaluation of Research Culture Initiatives project. And very much see it as a mechanism by which we can determine the progress that's been made in a number of different areas of research culture and then kind of cumulatively. if we similarly can do that at a unit level, so be that within research groups and departments, across institutes, do it at that unit level and build up a picture cumulatively to that institutional level and we can compare it against our action plan and get a really good sense of which areas are in that more embryonic and emergent phase and then which are in that in this more evolving or embedded phase where they've got really good research culture practice that might even be shareable and help other units within the institution to enhance their practice.

One of the biggest challenges that we found kind of throughout and something that we experienced even back when we were doing those initial consultations was how to engage as many people as possible within the research community. And I think this maturity framework has actually been really helpful for us in terms of whenever we've done a sort of a staff survey or CEDARS or any kind of follow on engagement with the research community, again you only get a certain percentage actually completing those and so it's really really useful feedback but you ideally for it to be meaningful and impactful want as many members of the research community as possible. So one of the things that we've been looking at is how we could do that with the maturity framework and so far we've piloted it in two departments and we did it at their research away days. So we had the vast majority of research and research enabling staff at those away days and we actually had some PGR students as well, which was fantastic. again, it's looking at how we can maybe find other ways to engage some of the groups that might not necessarily even be at an away day like that. So in some departments that might be technicians, PGR students and also, not everybody necessarily always attends. There are many, many conflicts on time, so it's also trying to capture the people who weren't able to attend for whatever reason.

That sounds really great, Amy. And I think you've already started to touch on how you're implementing it. And I guess I was just, the question I have for both of you is what's been the response to this, given what you've just been saying about engagement. And I think that's a problem that people are feeling across the board. I was talking to a colleague yesterday, about resource scarcity, and obviously we're working in an economic crisis, but time. Time is a scarce resource at the moment and we're finding, you know, with our pulse surveys and things like that, no, no, no, don't have 10 minutes, So, it would be interesting to hear from you both about what's the kind of response to this work. So, Amy, did you want to come in there?

Yeah, so as I mentioned before, we've trialled this so far at two departmental research away days and I think actually building it in to an away day like that where the group is already together has been really, really helpful because you've already got everyone there, there's already a kind of a scheduled time to look at it. And what we did before commencing those pilots is met with the faculty leadership and we've done that throughout our four faculties to ensure that everyone is on the same page about what we're trying to achieve when we do this. And we've already got that buy-in, if you like, from the research leads in the room who can then help facilitate the discussion on their tables and help drive that forward. However, not every department has a Research Away Day. Not everyone has that same kind of mechanism.

So what I'm looking at at the moment as an alternative is actually creating a digital form of the maturity framework that can be used in some departments that have said that that would be particularly helpful and should actually hopefully increase engagement with it. I've also with one department already started working with them in a slightly more broken down way in that I've already met with their research committee and their PGR students separately. And that's been really interesting as well because one of the things that has been really nice at the Research Away days is that you tend to get a mix of research only staff, PGR, academics at different levels, early career, mid-career, later career. And so there's some really interesting discussion that comes about from that. But then when you actually have those groups separately as well, it tends to be slightly different conversations, and there'll be certain topics that are delved into in a bit more detail, which has been a completely different experience and a completely different dynamic, but also really rich feedback. The other thing that's been, really helpful and a little bit unexpected was that similarly to Newcastle we've based our maturity framework on our action plan on the four different thematic areas within our action plan which mapped really nicely as it happened onto PCE. So we have like ensuring integrity of our research that mapped really nicely onto responsibility, enabling research opportunities through collaboration innovation, connectivity, recognising and developing our research community development and sustaining and supporting inclusive environment which is inclusivity. I think we looked at about 150 indicators and how we could kind of succinctly then put that into a framework where essentially a researcher was saying well this particular statement that's under embryonic practice fits best with our department or actually we think we're more at the kind of embedded stage of open research or whatever it might be.

And I think I went into it expecting that this would be based on their experiences of the research culture initiatives and their environment that they'd experienced so far at Lancaster. But what I was actually hearing was that people were kind of benchmarking against their other experiences as well throughout their career. And so people were telling us that, we actually think this particular area, we've got much better practice, let's say, than we did at a previous institution or actually at a previous institution they did this, this and this is something we could consider at Lancaster. So that was really interesting to sort of hear people talking about it in terms of their holistic experience and sharing that and reflecting on that in the room and that again led to a kind of a change in the dynamic and discussion about kind of how that unit could move forward. And then obviously I can take that away as well and reflect on that for the unit and how to support them in terms of things like the production of SPRE narratives and kind of support them in enhancing their practice but I can also take that away on a cumulative level and look at that against our action plan and what areas we could actually add value.

That sounds great, Amy, and I guess a big plus for you where people were saying, hey, it's great at Lancaster and it was rubbish somewhere else. But nice to see that that tool's working in that way, not just to almost benchmark your work, but to get people to think about the cultures that they've experienced, because obviously I think that also can empower them to want to be part of the culture change experience as well so that's really great to hear. Nicola what was your kind of experience of running this work with your colleagues at Newcastle?

I think touching on what Amy said there about buy-in, I think that's absolutely essential. And actually one of the reasons we created this framework was really to improve the buy-in to the research culture work. So the work that we do, and we've got an awful lot of work going on at Newcastle, it's all driven by what we've heard from our research community when we've done our consultations and co-creation.

One of the criticisms that we've had is that some of the work feels very top down because we're a central team. We're trying to deliver activity and resources and support for an entire research community across the institution. And so when people try to engage with the work, they don't always feel part of it. And I think that's a fair perception. And so we really wanted to create this framework to get people actively engaged in their local area and that buy-in is absolutely essential. And when we created the framework, we didn't know if it would achieve that goal. It was a brand new tool, and we didn't know the best way to sort of release it out there into the institution. And so we were very acknowledging of everything that you said there, Emily, about being, you know, resources are tight and time pressure is huge. And we wanted to be really supportive of pilot groups getting involved with this and really let them drive how they engaged with it. So I was very hands off in the first instance with the pilot groups. I was very clear to them that we'd produce this tool. We wanted them to try it out, to give us some feedback. And as important as it was for us to understand how, you know, it would help us understand their research culture, we really wanted it to be of value for them. So they could understand what was going on, so they could prioritise and they could start to develop actions that we could then support them with. And so with that hands off approach, letting them drive the two pilot groups that got involved initially our School of Engineering. It's a huge school, about 250 plus academics in there and our School of English, which is a much, much smaller school, very different makeup. And as you can imagine, two very different disciplines and it was really interesting to see the responses from those two schools. So just to give you a little bit of insight, our School of Engineering, when I delivered the framework to them, as I said, it's in an Excel spreadsheet and immediately they worked with that Excel spreadsheet. They took it out to their school and they asked members of that school to rate each of the areas of action where they think they fell across those levels of maturity.

So what they produced at the end was the Excel spreadsheet filled with percentages that represented the percentage of school members that thought, you know, environmental sustainability, 50 % thought it was evolving or whatever it was. Totally contrasting to that and perhaps falling into some sort of stereotypes here, the School of English didn't engage with the spreadsheet at all. They closed it down and they opened up a Word document and they started reflecting and writing a narrative about how they perceived the research culture in their area and what they were already doing, where they thought there were some gaps and what they could improve on. And so the first bits of feedback I got from this document was an Excel spreadsheet with full of numbers from Engineering and a Word document full of writing from the School of English, which I think is really interesting.

It's really useful, obviously, it being a pilot. I didn't know how this was going to work and I'm not convinced yet. There is potentially one way that will suit everyone, but I think there is a basic structure that everyone can work with in some respect. And it's really interesting what Amy said there about creating digital tools, because that's something we're thinking about what resources, you know, the physical resources can we produce that will make engaging with this process most useful for that particular unit. And then the next steps, thinking about the group start to prioritize where they think they should be paying attention to and the things they want to progress. How do we help them with that? How often did they want to sort of interact with myself and the research culture team? Is it regular check-ins? Am I hand holding them through it? And how do I deliver support? One of the really useful things is that as they're starting to identify priority areas, I can match them with the necessary teams that can support them in those areas. And that's so useful because research culture is so broad. When people ask me to go and talk about research culture, I always find it quite difficult because I don't know exactly what it is they want to hear about.

And when I start going through, we have six top priority projects by the time I've told them where those came from, what we're doing, the progress we're making, the evaluation we're using. You can just, you know, people are tuning out. They don't necessarily care about all those six projects. There'll be something else they're thinking of. Using this framework lets me understand what is most important to that unit at that time. And therefore I can directly deliver the resources that they need. And conversely, it's understanding the great practice exactly as Amy said that's already happening. You know that shareable practice, how to capture that in a useful way and take that back to the other units. And that's something I'm thinking about with the pilot groups between English and Engineering, even though the disciplines are wildly different, there will be some practice that each of those are doing that the other unit will be interested in. And it's just understanding how to capture that and share it in a useful way.

And one of the another interesting insight from Engineering was that when they first engaged with the tool, they thought a generic tool wasn't going to be necessarily useful for them, that they might prefer an Engineering specific version. And they were very keen to know if there was an Engineering department at Lancaster that they could share expertise with. But as they're going through it, they haven't given any feedback in terms of changing the tool to make it Engineering specific.

And I think there's actually a really useful amount of learning that they can share with the English department in Newcastle in the first instance, but not to say that they can't, of course, share wider as we go forward. So I think the results so far have been incredibly positive, really high engagement, and really looking forward to where the pilot groups progress.

So I mean very happy to put our Engineering departments in contact with one another. That sounds absolutely fantastic. And I'm sure there's a lot of lessons that could be learned and a lot of potential collaboration there. So I just wanted to reflect really on the different ways in which it's been used. so when we, when we took ours to research away days, I literally printed out A3 copies of each kind of thematic area and just added one very simple column on the end of the spreadsheet essentially which was just a why, why have you chosen this particular statement? What's your justification for this? So that we could get that bit of kind of qualitative feedback really about was it a particular practice that they'd seen within their department? Was it something they'd seen elsewhere in the institution, even outside of the institution, in the Engineering school at Newcastle for instance, where had they seen this fantastic practice and why had they then justified it? And similarly on the other side of things, why did they feel that things weren't as good as they could be? What could be done to enhance? And for me, that column and that, the discussion that that resulted in as well was the of the richest feedback that we could get because the numbers were fantastic. It was great to be able to then, as I say, start to build up, especially cumulatively, picture of how many departments are saying that their practice is kind of embryonic in this area, or how many departments are saying that it's kind of more embedded in another area. And that's really helpful. But what we wanted to try and establish was, well, how can we take things further forward? What can we do? And if we've got that kind of qualitative feedback about what is working well, what is challenging, then that's really helpful for us with some potential solutions there that we can help support. So I think for me one of the biggest things that the maturity framework has done, like Nicola said, it's actually just getting that engagement and having those discussions and actually going into those two departments.

But I think actually going in at that kind of unit level and talking to people about their experiences on an individual group or departmental level has just been so helpful that I've taken so much away from that in terms of how we can enhance things further and how we can hear from those people that we don't always hear from in those kind of more institutional settings and opportunities.

I mean, just reflecting on what you've both said about some of the, I guess, the tweaks that you've made to the process or the tweaks that the people that you've been working with have made to the process and also reflecting a bit on what we've said about, time being a bit of a luxury at the moment. We know SPRE, you know, strategy people and research environment for REF is coming down the line. We know there's now going to be this kind of ramping up towards how do we measure things? Where does this fit within this constellation of metric exercises, for want of a better term? And how does that also fit with how we best serve our research communities, knowing that time is a bit of a luxury at the moment?

So our Research Excellence Culture Action Plan or RECAP for short at Lancaster is a four-year action plan and we're actually seeing the maturity framework exercise as a kind of a midterm review if you like. We started this in like I say the tail end of 2023 doing our consultations, launched our first action plan based on the feedback that we've had from those consultations and with the help of our fantastic and dedicated research culture facilitator Elizabeth Adams, who I should do a little shout out to who is marvellous, who gave us a real steer on how we could drive some of this further forward based on those discussions and some of the potential actions that were already there within that feedback. And we launched our first Research Culture Day in 2024 and we are planning on it being a four-year action plan that kind of, you know, does actually as it happened, take us up to to REF 2029 essentially. So this has kind of come in at that mid-term point and it seemed like a really good opportunity to do a a further community consultation. So we've done it in that way, but we've also kind of been looking at PCE indicators and we haven't actually changed the maturity framework yet just because we've had the partial guidance on SPRE but we don't know exactly yet which of the indicators will be used so we've continued to use as many as we could out of the PCE indicators that kind of mapped with our action plan as it was and just stayed with that. what doing all of that kind of mapping and consolidation and kind of streamlining has meant is that when we're getting the feedback from the maturity framework exercise and what I hope will continue to be the case is that we can then report it into a number of different areas simultaneously so we can use it to give us our kind of measure our progress against our action plan and that's first and foremost what we use it for. But as I said before it should hopefully be useful feedback for reflection for the unit themselves in terms of developing their kind of UoA narratives. It will be helpful for us with our institutional statement when we look at it cumulatively. We've also just been doing an exercise actually because we are putting together what our next action plan for HR excellence in research will look like. So we've actually been mapping that against our research excellence culture action plan as well and thinking about where we actually already have forward actions in a particular area than how we then report that work into that action plan as well. And so we've very much been going through a process of mapping and streamlining as much as possible because really just conscious of both the capacity in the team, but also the capacity of our entire research community and want to get as much engagement as possible. But in terms of that kind of evaluation reporting, make it as streamlined and not too time intensive ideally.

I think similar to Amy, we are hoping that this will be incredibly useful for SPRE preparation. And when we actually first started thinking about this, it was around the time that the PCE pilot was happening and it was really interesting how many people from the community contacted us asking us if we were going to run another research culture survey. So we ran one back in 2022.

When the requests for a second research culture survey started coming in, we thought a lot about it and the value of doing that because if anyone is familiar with running surveys, you'll know they're not perfect. Even designing the questions that you ask, there's a lot of thought and effort that goes into it to make sure people understand the question as you intend for it to be asked. And it's so susceptible to the things people are going through and recognising that as we've touched on, you know, there is the financial crisis in the sector at the moment. There's been a huge amount of change at the university and across the sector. People feel that there's anxiety, they're unsure. Even if we ask questions directly relating to the research culture work that we have been progressing as a team, we can't guarantee the answers that we see are going to come back in reference to just the activity we sort of hold.

And even though those responses would be really valuable to understand what the community is saying, it's not a useful way to get insights into exactly what they mean, what are the exact circumstances they're dealing with in that area, what's the exact changes that they want to see that we might be able to influence. And so we're really hoping the maturity framework is an alternative way to do that, to understand that local context that sits in the wider institutional context and of course in the sector itself. But understanding what can be valuable to learn from these groups for us as a team to help make the change that they want to see. And we just don't think a survey would get us to that same point. And the other thing it does that Amy, I think, covered really well there, it is about that narrative. It's the distance travelled. It gives the space to allow people to start cataloguing that and, you know, reflecting on their experiences and reflecting on what they care about and their priorities into the future, which again, a survey certainly wouldn't allow that. And as much as I think I'm noticing people involved in REF and the SPRE, there are units of assessment leads that are of thinking about putting these statements together. They'll hold an awful lot of information about what's happening in their unit, but they won't hold all of it.

And there's no easy way to gather that information from all of the people involved. you know, all the PGRs and technicians and research enablers, some of these units are huge. And so producing a framework like this and encouraging everyone to engage with it and as it sort of grows and becomes more standard practice in future, people should start to learn what this is and how they can interact with it. Hopefully that will provide a really valuable mechanism to get an idea of some of these sort of assessment measures, whether they're valuable for SPRE or not. And it's not REF driven why we've produced this. We're very clear about that. It's very REF aligned. It's very useful. think as Amy touched on, a lot of those areas of action overlap directly. But it's also really useful for other stuff. There's a lot in there about addressing inequalities that meets our Athena SWAN and Race Equality Charters, there's a lot about team development and skills development that directly speaks to the Researcher Development Concordat. And so we're really using this tool and working with the necessary groups in other areas to provide useful information for those different submissions as well. So it shouldn't just stop at research culture and REF certainly not stop at REF but other teams can use it and other submissions will benefit from it too.

I really like this idea that both of you have kind of touched on of meeting people where they are, of asking them you know, why are you saying this? Not just, asking them for the answers, but reflecting on why they're giving those answers as well. And also kind of making this tool effective for other teams. And it just feels like from what I'm hearing, these are actually kind of capacity building type frameworks. you know, yes, it requires a bit of input of time, but it actually going to save people a lot of energy while also kind of giving them the space and the ability to be in the driver's seat for some research culture change and that reflective aspect as well.

I guess it leads me on to, a final question I wanted to ask you both, which is everything you said about capacity building and meeting people where they are and enabling that change locally and also that localised change leading to maybe institutional and sector wide change. For you, for each of you, what does research culture change actually look like?

So fundamentally it's about creating and maintaining a good place to work. Having a culture that enables the best research but in a way that supports the people who do it. And I mean we have, as I say, a research excellence culture action plan but for me it's about redefining what we mean by excellence.

So, yes, grants and journals and rankings and individual successes are really important, but so are team successes, mentoring and collaboration, the impact of that quality research, open research, good and effective leadership. So I think it's about broadening and shifting that scope so that we recognise and reward those things as well and are just more transparent, supportive, inclusive in our behaviour. And I see it as our collective roles to ensure that the structures and the mechanisms are there and are communicated. That enable all of that to happen but I think real research culture changes everyone's responsibility. If you see something that needs enhancing or you see something that really shouldn't be happening at all, raise it, get in touch, you know, let's do something about that. I mean, Nicola already touched on the changes that have been happening in the sector and it's been even before the current kind of financial situation that the HE sector and others find themselves in. You know, we had a global pandemic. It's been, it has been a huge period of change. It's actually something that our Wellcome Trust project is looking at is kind of looking at how we reimagine our research practices for the future to be more kind of agile and resilient and that's focusing on particular areas like ethics and sustainability and inclusion but I think it's such an important point that it's really kind of focused priorities I think but priorities have also changed over the last year over the last few years and so there's a lot to do in this space and I think we've talked a little bit about REF, and for me it's just about continuing to enhance things in the way that is the best help to the researcher community and hopefully then when we reach those snapshots in time what you see is an enhanced picture.

I'm not sure how I can top that. That was so eloquently put by Amy there. But I suppose just stressing some of the points you made there, Amy, I think for research culture to be positive and sustainable, it needs to be adaptable and reflexive. You know, the community that creates that research culture is changing all the time, for better or for worse, different people coming in, you know, sharing different views, different values. It needs to be adaptable for the community itself internally, but all of those external changes, the environmental changes, the sector changes, and I think it needs to be adaptable to them and reflexive to them. And I think a word that you highlighted there, that resilience. I think if we get research culture work right, then we can be hit by some of these major changes and we have had some biggies in recent times. But a positive research culture, hopefully it should sustain itself throughout that despite those changes people should know the values that they hold and work to be able to maintain and sustain those values going forward. And what I'd really like to see I think is a research culture that it's not a separate thing, it's truly embedded.

It's sort of odd that there is, you know, a research culture manager and it's odd particularly because I'm very open about this at Newcastle with our community that as research culture manager, I can't change the research culture. There's no policy I can put in place or new initiative that I can start that will do it. The research community holds that power and I'm here to support and enable that as much as I can and it is that embedding and that inclusion, and making people really value this work for themselves and for their colleagues and their peers, regardless of who they interact with. And I might be talking myself out of a job a little bit here, but I would really like to see that embedding in such a positive way that the need for it to be an add-on that, you know, here's your research and now you think about your research culture, it should just be one and the same. That would be the hope. But as I said, think Amy put it really, really well.

I'm thinking back to something that I think Amy was saying earlier about research culture that not being one size fits all, and we're quite often finding we're talking about research cultures in the plural. And that's because, you know, a culture in Engineering is going to be different to English. There's going to be lots of things that you can share but there's going to be lots of things that are very, very different. And so as a centralised research culture manager, as a centralised research culture team, what can you do other than give that power and that reflection back to the communities that we serve? And I do think it sounds really like, you know, the maturity frameworks that you've been trialling have been starting to do that, is to build that time for reflection, build that capacity, meet them where they are. And I think hopefully that might precipitate some of the change that you've been talking about.

Absolutely, and I think just conscious of keeping us all in a job, if that adaptability does happen, I suppose what we think of now, what we're aiming towards, a positive research culture, as we move towards that, hopefully that sort of finishing line, it will shift, it will keep evolving, it will keep getting better, and that's what we're hoping to incorporate into the maturity framework as well, that we have narrated what we see as an embedded, research culture embedded areas for action, but over time those should progress and enhance and get better. We don't necessarily know what that looks like yet, but it's definitely worth keeping us all in a job to find out, I would say.

That's the soundbite for the episode. Research culture's here to stay, please don't make us redundant. I really like that. Thanks Nicola. I mean thank you both for your time, this has been really really great.

Any final tidbits on research culture for our listeners?

Well, I suppose I just want to get on record my thanks to, well, to Emily for inviting both of us to do this podcast. Really pleased to have had this opportunity to discuss this area, but also very much to Nicola as well for sharing the maturity framework and to enabling this work. And it is very much about that reflection and engagement.

and enhancement and that is what I think makes this such a positive mechanism and it might well be that there's other things that we could do with the approaches that we could take in the future but I think one of the most exciting things for me is how this has actually enabled people to engage more in this work and to feel more of sense of belonging and ownership around what they can do to enhance their own research culture and to really reflect on that and to engage further. So that for me is what's been really exciting. So yeah, so thank you.

Of course, I'd like to say it on record, you're welcome, No, I'd like to echo my thanks as well, of course. I think one of the great things about working in research culture is that everyone I have met that works in this domain lives those values. Collaboration is absolutely key and everyone is so open to sharing their resources and their learning.

And I think this podcast is an incredible example of that and how many people have engaged with it and the sort of learning and knowledge that you're sharing out there. So thank you so much for inviting us to speak about this. And of course, if everyone loves it, we'll be more than happy to come back and do it again.

Well, thank you both for coming. And can you say goodbye to our listeners?

Thank you so much for having us, it was lovely to be here.

Goodbye everyone, thanks for having us.

Thanks everyone for listening and you'll hear from us more soon about some more research culture uncovered goodies.