Host Dr Emily Ennis is joined by colleagues from the University of Leeds Researcher Development and Research Culture team, Dr Taryn Bell, Dr Shareefa Fadhel, and Malaika Khalid, for a post-conference reflection on the International Research Culture Conference (IRCC).

Following presentations, workshops, networking, and conversations at Warwick, the team share what stood out, what surprised them, and what gives them hope for the future of research culture.

In this conversation:

• A movement growing up. Four years on from the first IRCC, there was a strong sense that research culture conversations are maturing. Discussions are increasingly focused on implementation, evidence, and sustainability, rather than simply defining what research culture is.
• Hope in uncertain times. Amid challenging funding landscapes and questions about the future of research culture initiatives, delegates repeatedly returned to a sense of optimism. Despite uncertainty, there remains a strong appetite for collaboration and positive change.
• Microinclusions, not just big interventions. Malaika reflects on the power of small acts of inclusion and recognition. From ensuring everyone has a voice in meetings to acknowledging contributions that often go unseen, meaningful culture change can start with everyday interactions.
• Recognition as culture change. The team discuss how recognising the labour of colleagues, especially work that is often invisible, can improve belonging, motivation, and collaboration across research communities.
• Getting the right people in the room. Taryn shares reflections on discussions involving funders, institutional leaders, and practitioners, highlighting the value of bringing different perspectives together to tackle sector-wide challenges.
• From conversation to action. Conferences provide space to connect and reflect, but attendees also explored how to translate ideas into practical action, ensuring discussions lead to meaningful and lasting change.
• Finding community. Beyond the formal programme, the conference reinforced the importance of networks, shared learning, and creating spaces where people working in research culture can learn from each other.
• What's next? Emily, Shareefa, Taryn, and Malaika each share one idea, insight, or action they'll be taking forward from the conference into their own work.

Organisations, Networks & Events Mentioned

• International Research Culture Conference (IRCC)
• University of Warwick Research Culture
• Research Culture Enablers Network (RCEN)
• Wellcome Trust

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Every autumn, year after year, a remarkable journey begins. Drawn by forces that feel almost instinctive, individuals leave their familiar surroundings and begin traveling towards a common destination. They depart from different places, often hundreds of miles apart. They may have never met, but once they're in one space, they come together to renew the health of a wider ecosystem. Their convergence is so significant that entire communities depend on it. And in some places entire food chains. I am of course talking about the annual salmon run. Fat bear week has come and gone, Backpack triumphed and I still have only lingering sadness that bear 910 didn't win. Okay, there is a point to all of this, I promise, because while I was spending an entirely reasonable amount of time thinking about exceptionally chunky bears, another annual migration was quietly taking place.

This one involved fewer waterfalls, though navigating through Coventry may have felt a bit like swimming upstream at times. The destination was Warwick and the occasion was the International Research Culture Conference. Since I wasn't one of the lucky ones making the journey this year, I've invited three people to today's podcast who were. With me, Emily E., we'll be looking back at the conference, what stood out, what surprised our guests, and what they're bringing home from this year's conference.

Today I'm joined by three members of the Researcher Development and Research Culture team here at Leeds. Let me introduce them to you now. Firstly, I'm joined by Dr. Taryn Bell Researcher Development Consultant. You'll know her voice already from her own episodes of the Research Culture Uncovered podcast, but please say hello to our listeners now, Taryn.

Hi everyone.

Thanks, Taryn. Our second guest is Dr. Shareefa Fadhel, Research Culture Advisor with a focus on embedding institutional research culture initiatives. She also works closely with the Research Culture Enablers Network coordinated from University of Warwick. Shareefa, please say hello.

Hi, everyone.

And finally, we have our much-beloved Malaika Khalid, Research Culture Support Officer and Gen Z Ambassador, who joined the Research Culture team just under two years ago. She keeps the team afloat and now we get to share her with you. Malaika, please say hello to our incredibly welcoming listeners.

Hey everyone, glad to be here.

Thanks guys, so thank you so much for agreeing to spend some time today just reflecting on the International Research Culture Conference that was held in Warwick just a couple of weeks ago. I think the first question I'd really like to ask the three of you is actually what you were most looking forward to when you were planning to attend the conference.

I think I was most looking forward to sort of getting out of our own institutional bubble, the University of Leeds, for a couple of days and sort of hearing about what other people across the sector are doing. I feel like everyone approaches research culture differently, whether that's sort of EDI data or engagement. As someone lucky enough to sort of have my hands in all of these baskets, I was really keen to see how others are doing it. and I was also really keen to learn as one of the younger people here in the team and sort of quite early in my research culture career.

Conferences like the International Research Culture Conference are a great opportunity for someone like myself to hear new perspectives and come away with new ideas. So yeah, definitely hoping for a mix of inspiration and a better understanding of what the wider sector is thinking at the minute.

Thanks, Malaika. And yeah, definitely confirming you are the baby of the group. So, I think it's time to go to a more seasoned professional. So, Shareefa, what were you looking forward to most about attending the conference?

so, I went in looking for hope and inspiration. Having attended the first research culture conference at Warwick, back then everyone was asking the question of what is research culture? What does it mean? How did you define it? What do you understand the scope of it? What's the approach to it? Four years on, I just went in thinking, okay, we've done four years now. We know what it is. What's next? What's the hope that we have? Have we done anything significant that we're proud of as a change within the national or the even wider international research culture environment? So, I went with a lot of hope, hoping to come back with some inspirational ideas, something that I could do

on a university level. So, and how maybe best to look at it from a different perspective. I think that was also another thing that I wanted as part of that kind of hope and inspiration that I was looking for.

That's really great, thanks Shareefa. And I think that we'll get a chance to reflect a little bit on you know, whether that hope was delivered on. And I think we're at really interesting juncture for research culture at the moment. And it's really nice to hear actually the distance travelled. That's always a nice positive thing to think about. But obviously a lot of us are reflecting on research culture, and particularly at this conference, thinking about what happens next and what happens as we approach REF but also what happens when during a period of financial restriction as well around research culture work so I really like the idea of going in on hope let's see if that was delivered. So, Taryn how about you what were your kind of hopes to draw on what Shareefa was saying in terms of going into the conference itself?

Yeah, so this was my first time going to the Research Culture Conference, which is really nice because I often find that when you've been in the sector for a while, you can end up going to the same conferences year in, year out. So, I was really looking forward to going to a conference with a slightly different audience. Also very selfishly, I was running my own session there and we'd put a lot of work into it, and I was just really looking forward to the conference is an opportunity for us to progress the work that we've been doing for quite some time. I feel like a conference is quite a good way to push projects forward, particularly if they feel like they've been going quite slowly to date.

Can you say a little bit more about what going slowly looks like?

I, as part of the session I was running, I was running it with colleagues from across the sector at a number of different universities and funders. And anyone will know trying to set up even one meeting with people from four or five different organizations is like pulling teeth. It is extremely difficult. as progress was really slow because we were all just so busy. and so, for me, the conference was brilliant because it was one day where, well, the in-person day anyway, was one day where we all would be there and we could all could chat in person. it just, it was almost like an accelerator for the project we're working on. And I feel like we made more progress in that one day than we had in like the previous six months.

So, my salmon converging in a stream metaphor is definitely the right way to go by the sounds of it. I'm kind of really excited to hear about the really positive things that came out of the conference. So maybe that's a really great place to start in terms of what were some of people's positive reflections coming out of the conference.

I think what I came out with was there's a growing maturity of the research culture community. It's beyond the initial teams that existed and now it's spreading wider on institutional levels. Everyone's talking about it. Everyone's involved in their own way. And I think from a from a University of Leeds perspective, the enhanced research culture funding that we gave out is an indication of that, how everyone's translating research culture in their own way and to their own needs. And that was also reflective at the conference, which was very interesting.

Because when you look at the different posters that were put there, the different workshops that were going on in parallel sessions, it just gives you that reflection of the depth and breadth of research culture. It's not one thing, it's several things. the other theme is that there's a lot of optimism, but at the same time there's a lot of uncertainty and they exist side by side. So, you see the enthusiasm of people, thinking about, we're doing this kind of project, this is the progress that we've achieved, this is the change that we're looking at, but at the same time, they don't know what the future holds, Another thing that came up is the impact of the activities that are going on and that have been done since research culture came into the radar. Most of the impact of research culture is not instant.

It takes time and I think the return on investment if that's the right word to use wouldn't be right now. We might see in the future. the scale of the activities that are underway again it's wide and ranging but it is effective in its own way so different cultural changes are happening, but we can't see the immediate outcome of them at the moment. And I think that's the that's what came out from most of the discussions that I was having. And the final theme that I thought was coming out was the gap between everyone's strategies or statements or guidance that they received from their institution and the lived experiences on the ground and how that is sometimes mismatched. So, universities say one thing, the strategies say one thing, but the individual experiences are another. And to be maybe frank, is most of the people that you meet on the ground at the conference were talking about either they've just recently changed jobs because of research culture funding finishing, or they're looking for a a new role because they don't know what the future holds. So, it just feels like it's still in that uncertain position. and maybe going back to my initial hope idea of going into that conference was I wanted more of a concrete idea of what do we do as a collective going forward.

I think that's a really worthwhile tension because I think you mentioned the phrase return on investment which is kind hard to avoid in the current setting. just as you were saying people on the brink of losing their jobs or already looking for new jobs but at the same time having to hold in your head that actually we won't see a return on investment yet and actually all we do sort of have is hope and promise I guess that in the future there is something coming. It's kind of quite a bit of a whirlwind here in that people can feel really positive at the same time as feeling actually quite nervous about what might happen next. you know, I think we would all love something more concrete, as you put it. But equally, you know, if you're also seeing this kind of wide range of things that are happening, it's kind of hard to not still get really excited about it, even though there's kind of not that concrete thing there.

I think we can come back to reflecting a little bit more on maybe some of the challenges that this conference threw up.

Yeah, definitely. I'd echo some of what Shareefa said in the sense of we are a sector that is constantly in flux, but it feels particularly challenging at the moment. But in spite of that, whenever you go to a conference, particularly in person, there's always a vibe in the room. And for me, the vibe was very energetic, very practical, very positive. So, I think in spite of the challenges that the sector is undergoing. It was a really nice space to be in for a day. I really, really enjoyed myself there. And I think the conference organizers did a really good job of building an environment and atmosphere that felt warm and felt welcoming to everybody.

Yeah, I'd say so as well. I attended some really interesting sessions that covered things like microinclusions and making people feel more visible. and those are really inspiring and positive on the ground things that I feel like I really took away from, and I found it really interesting that sort of while we well, we often talk about some of the negative things within academia and the experiences that people can have. One of the sessions that I attended actually really focused on the positive side of things. I feel like I don't personally hear about microinclusions very often. it was sort of a term I came across at the conference actually. And it sort of really got me thinking about how we can make people feel more involved and included, both on the ground but also at that higher up level. and for me at least it really made me stop and think about culture change and how we sometimes talk about culture changes though it always has to be about huge institutional strategies and these major programmes but a lot of culture is shaped by a lot of the smaller things and that's something I really took away from the conference because so many different universities are doing things in such different ways and it's always really interesting to learn from that and see what we can sort of learn from them but also teach other people as well.

Yeah, I think if anyone has seen me or someone from the research culture team at Leeds talk over the last year, they'll have probably heard us talk a little bit about what we call kind of micro changes. And, you know, we love we love the big picture stuff. But we think it's also really important to do that small scale stuff. But micro inclusions is a new term to me. So, Malaika, I'm wondering, could you give us an example of what a micro inclusion might be, just in case some of our listeners want to try and practice some themselves.

Yes, so the person that talked about this was a PhD student from the University of St Andrews, so I want to give them credit for that. But microinclusion is sort of the opposite of a microaggression in that it's a small act or a small thing that can make somebody feel more included and valued within the space. some of the examples that they brought to the table were things like acknowledging every single person that's on a table, that's contributing to the space, making sure that everybody has something to say, sometimes people can feel less confident to say things, and it's important to sort of make sure that everybody that is in a room has the chance to present their ideas. and another example that they gave us was also crediting people in work and research and making sure that everybody, all the way from you know, technicians to people doing the academia and all of the above sort of get credited within that work.

I think that's really, really important. actually, I mean, just as a bit of context, was due to attend the conference and then at the last minute wasn't able to. But when my colleagues who I was supposed to be running a session with spoke about that session on LinkedIn, they actually tagged me as someone who had created the session because I had. But I think that's a really great example of a micro inclusion that actually you don't even need to be in the same room. We should be talking about people and their work even when they're not there. That should be our industry standard.

I think let's let's hope the listeners take some of these on board because I think they're quick wins in a time whereas Shareefa and Taryn have already pointed out it's quite scary there's quite not a lot of opportunity to bring people together in the same way or to kind of have that big scale and influence and sector-wide change so I think yeah maybe let's focus more on micro-inclusions. I mean we've talked about the some of the positive things that we took away from the conference. I'm kind of hesitant to bring up some of the negative things because you know we've talked around the subject quite a bit in terms of the the context and the moment in time, we find ourselves being research culture practitioners and that need for hope in a time where maybe hope isn't a super abundant resource.

One thing that always comes up for me at conferences in general is I think sometimes I think people have a tendency, and I can say I've done this myself as well, where you turn up at a conference and your aim is to tell people what you've done, and it kind of stops there. You say what you did, you give the results, and then the conversation kind of stops.

And the problem with this is sometimes the discussions we can get into at conferences can revolve a lot around what the problem is without starting to make practical recommendations. Because when I go to a conference, obviously part of it is I'm going there to meet new people. But a lot of it is I want to hear what people think I should do, how I should change my practice, what tips they have from their experience. And I sometimes find that that can be lacking.

I think sometimes that though that is just a reflection of the time available at conferences. This was a great conference, and I think the timings worked well in that it felt quite relaxed. But I think I was only, there were a couple of keynotes, but I was only actually at two sessions including my own. So, it felt like there for me wasn't quite enough time to really dive deep into some of the topics we talked about. The problem is I'm coming at this with a challenge, but then I don't necessarily have a solution. Because if you make the conference longer, that then has knock-on effects for some people who can't afford to stay overnight for another day, or they've got caring responsibilities, or they just don't have the bandwidth for, you know, an extra day of conference. So, I'm not really sure that I have a solution. This was something that, you know, we struggled with in our own session, where we had 90 minutes and we were very clear, we spent a lot of time beforehand as a group organizing the session so that we didn't end up just talking about challenges for 90 minutes. So, we basically gave people 10 minutes to get it all off their chests. And then we tried to spend as much of the rest of the session thinking, okay, what should we do instead? How do we move on from this? We know this is a problem. we all agree what the problem is. What do we do? And it was difficult. I mean, we got there.

But I did get to the end of our session and think, God, I could have run that session all day. You we could have kept talking all day. And so, I think it is a challenge. I don't necessarily think it's not like a negative reflection on the conference itself. I think it's just a challenge of running conferences in general. I always come away from them feeling like I wish I'd stayed for another day. I wish that conversation had lasted a little bit longer.

I think you're right Taryn I think really frequently we are using those spaces to collectively bemoan the context in which we find ourselves rather than actually being

Mm-hmm.

quite solutions focused. And I think, I mean, the session that I was due to co-run, but which I co-designed, we did exactly the same thing, Taryn, where we said, right, 10 minutes, get it all off your chest. Then everything else is future focused. But then I also think the thing that we need to bear in mind is that, and maybe this is why, without getting too kind of deeply political or psychological about this, but in some ways, research culture practice has to be quite trauma informed as well, and that quite a lot of us are coming to research culture having experienced the worst possible sides of it. And I think that actually in some ways conferences can make us fall into those former patterns. So, this is how it's meant to run. This is a reminder of the research ecosystem, a reminder of sometimes the fact that it's inescapable as a concept. so, yeah, I mean, would love to have those more open-ended conversations but actually if you had a three-day conference would you just have three times the amount of complaining?

Yeah, and I think as well, it's like everyone's been to those academic conferences where they just decide to pack it with like 20 talks in a day and by the end of the day, you're exhausted, nothing's gone into your brain, you've forgotten half of what's been said. So, I think it's really, really challenging to create a conference environment which is both relaxed and allows time for reflection and where people get to the end of the day and feel like their thinking has moved on somewhat.

I guess not so much adding to the negative sort of aspects of the conference, but I think what would have been really helpful to some extent is having maybe more workshop format sort of sessions where people can have more facilitated discussions. I think having been to conferences in the past, I think people within the sector have a lot of ambition, but that can oftentimes then impact their wellbeing in the sense that they have all of these things that they really want to do alongside their sort of existing responsibilities and the work that they're already completing within their institution. And I think having a space where people can have those conversations but then also come away with some kind of tangible action or some kind of network or just something that they can then, you know, go away and feel like they've done something more with it would be really, really helpful.

I guess that aligns with that question around hope that Shareefa began with. So, I don't know, Shareefa, did you feel like going into that space with that sense of hope and wanting to achieve something, did you feel like that was delivered against in some ways?

Yes and no. So, I felt like some of the talks, especially the panel talks, had some elements of what the future could hold. So that kind of hope. Wellcome Trust Jimmy had a really well outlined what does collaboration mean, how we should go forward. But I think my reflection on that is without a collective

Being on the ground, saying it is not enough. Putting it as a guideline is not enough. someone has to take on the torch, to lead on this. And within the UK context, we do depend heavily on the funder, Wellcome Trust is one of them, and we we depend on their guidance and whatever they recommend or suggest is something that we as universities try to accommodate for. But you can't put guidance without the support in place. The infrastructure is missing, that kind of framework that helps universities actually work towards the end result that you're looking for. You want more collaboration, then you need to create that infrastructure, the ecosystem to help with that infrastructure. And that doesn't exist. So that where is the hope was in between. You said it but now let's see it in implementation. I would have wished to see more you know, getting up of, you know, institutions and saying, yes, we're in line, we will do this, we will collaborate. It felt like the negativity, if I can say, about the conference was it was of a sharing of experiences, of collective ideas, but not a framework or a plan or where are we? So, the there's no journey. We don't know what the destination is. I think that's that's the end result for me is we started but we don't know the destination. And it could be that the institutions need to collaborate with each other to think about what the destination looks like or what does it include.

I just had recently a chat with someone from an international university, and they were talking about what research culture meant to them. And it was completely different than what we think about research culture in the UK. And they're just across the channel, so they're in in Europe. And I thought, well, why can't we collaborate with them to understand what they did and what we could implement? And I'll go back to Malaika's point early when she was saying there are small things that make the changes and make a better research culture environment for people. It could be the small recognition; it could be just collaborating. It could be talking about a project. I always talk about who's your sponsor in in your absence and I think that misses, but these are good really life-changing moments that could put you up or put you down. another completely different one is I thought there was a lot of vibes within people. energy. So back to Taryn's energy, there was a lot of energy, and I love I I leave those conferences feeling energized that I want to I could, you know, I could change the world. And then you come to reality and there's nothing. You can't do that because there's so many rules and regulations. But I also felt there was that missing communication between people that we don't know. You see them, you see them on poster, but you can't relate to them. And I think going forward, if I was to do, and I've done a lot of conferences before, where you can actually there's like a QR code for each person on your badge, where if I want to talk to you and continue the conversation, I can actually go on that and it will just add to a note that you've met this person and We talked about research culture and narrative CVs, for example. So, it reminds me and when I go back, I get the whole note in my email saying, these are the people that you met and it's just tagging each other.

I really like that idea of almost like Pokémon, you've to catch them all, like QR coding everyone as you go around a conference. But actually, I was talking to Malaika off podcast, yeah, we do have conversations in the real world about the kind of, you start to see people on the circuit, right? So, you've seen people at this conference, you've seen at previous research culture conference or whatever, and maybe they form part of the same group. So, you can be like, I'm going to go to that group. That's the group that does X. And you can think of some quite big projects in the research culture space that actually creates almost its own galaxy of people. But, you know, going to these conferences is really useful for seeing them, but actually in a way you have to see them multiple times before you start to recognize who they are, but they're your people. You know, going back to Shareefa's point about who's your sponsor, when you're talking about within the research culture space, you want people in other institutions or people in other parts of your own institution that are already bought into research culture going, I think the solution to X problem is research culture. I'm going to get Shareefa in, I'm going to get Taryn in, I'm going to get Malaika in to come and solve this problem, whether that's in your institution or a different institution.

That takes a really long time to build up that network and that's just the people who are already bought in. What about you know the people who weren't at that conference you're all sitting there and you're that conversation like okay I've got some vague sense of hope for what we might do and here's Wellcome saying they're going to do this and then as you say Shareefa you come home and you go but I can't because actually the people who I need to sponsor my work weren't in that room so how how do we how do we do that I mean while we're talking about it now and maybe having reflected on it since the conference, is there anything that you guys can think of as how do we bridge that gap? How do we get those sponsors? How do we make sure that we're building the ecosystem that we need to sustain us?

So, one of the things we did for my session, so just as context, the session I ran has come out of a working group that I'm co-leading on how can research institutions better work together with funders to ensure that research culture is more securely embedded into grants, you know, not just research culture funding in its own right, but just research funding generally. And there is a lot of frustration there because I think funders and institutions are butting heads often. institutions realistically don't do things like Shareefa says unless funders tell them to. And then funders turn around and say, well, we can't do anything about that because that's the institution's responsibility. And so, we did a lot of work before, well, I say we, I've got to give a shout out to Hannah, one of my co-leads here, who did a lot of work, contacting funders and saying, look, we're gonna be here. We want you to be part of the conversation. Are you gonna come along? And actually, to their credit, most of the major funders actually did turn up to our session. And my gosh, it made such a difference because we made sure to kind of mix the tables up. So, it was a mixture of funders and a mixture of people from institutions. And the conversations were great because for the first time, the two groups were coming together and people were saying, well, I can't do that, or I can't do that, or what you don't understand about my context. And it was just actually nice. I mean, I know that there was a lot to be said about doing things online and how useful it can be to open things up, but actually having people physically in the room together, sat around a table, working through the same challenges made such a difference. And again, I think that's why it felt like we made such progress in such a short amount of time. Because a physical space does allow you to have multiple conversations at the same time. It does allow people to put a name to a face. And for me was a really positive outcome of the conference overall.

And I think as you say Taryn, also different people mixing with different people, you mix them up and I think there's a proximity bias sometimes actually in research culture where even when you're trying to solve a really big problem like more institutionalised research culture problem, like exactly as you said around funders where you're like I need to I need funders to change x before y can happen and you see it quite often with publishers as well, we need them to change their guidance around open access before

Hmm.

we can do the next thing. But then you just go to the same person you've always spoken to because that's your contact, because that's who you know and it's taken you a really long time for you to build up that contact, that network, as we've already been talking about and then you go right well I'll just go to them and they haven't got the answer because guess what they didn't have the answer last week or the week before or the year before or the year before that but when you start to mix it up a bit and they talk to different people even actually it might not even be the networks necessarily that unlocks the the progress but actually talking to different people makes someone perhaps go actually maybe I do have a solution to that problem and I didn't realise

Mm-hmm.

because someone hadn't asked me the question the way that I needed it to be

Yeah,

asked.

yeah. And I think as well, some of it is just, it's useful to see these people, see the people behind the institutions and behind the funders, because I think often, I know I've done it myself, you sit there and you go, well, the funders just don't care about this and they do. There are people behind, you know, the big facade who do care and do want to listen. And it was really heartening for me actually to have people turn up and take it seriously and really engage with the entire process. I mean, you know, we ended our session by having a bunch of recommendations that we're gonna turn into a draft statement that can go out and be reviewed by the sector. And one of the people who turned up from one of the funders took a picture of all the recommendations and said, I'm gonna take this back to the funder. And that's the kind of stuff you wanna see. And I think that's why often I think we can feel like our hands are tied because of our institutional processes. So, I think really getting to the people behind those can just be way more effective than kind of coming at it like, I'm just going to go and try and find the right person in amongst all these different processes. It kind of gets to who you need to find a lot quicker.

I think that's really, really important. I mean, if you're talking about funders in particular, especially UKRI funders, think the really important thing to remember there is that actually, because they belong to the civil service, they belong to the government, these are government roles. The people often can't represent the institutions, and they can't go on podcasts, for example. I'm not mentioning any names, but you you try and get people in the room to talk about these things and they can't, because they represent, or it might be seen to represent, a certain body that can't be represented in a particular way. So, conferences are a really great opportunity to just like peel back those layers and be like, okay, what do you actually think? And like, what the heck is actually happening there? And you don't get that if you send an email because actually, you know, emails get monitored and things like that. I'm not going all kind of, you know, tinfoil hat here. It's just the way that the infrastructure is built. And I think that that human-to-human interaction is just kind of, there is no real kind of substitute for that one.

I think you've already touched on our next steps and recommendations as part of your session, but I think it'd be really good to think about what actually you guys have taken away from the conference, know, come back, let's come back, let's come back to where Shareefa started with hope and what do we take from that.

I think sticking to my thread of recognition that I was talking about earlier, I think for me it's definitely trying to be a bit more intentional about recognition and sort of making people feel seen and valued. because I work quite a lot on our sort of engagement and EDI stuff within the team. I think taking some of those things I've learned into those spaces, being a bit more intentional with our engagement and trying to sort of recognize all elements of research culture. and I think ultimately, it's sort of the conference itself reminded me that it's not that research culture isn't something that sits separately from people. It's sort of shaped by the way we interact with each other every day, whether it's the small-scale stuff or the big scale stuff, it all sort of has some kind impact on what we're doing. So I think having more of a dedicated space for those discussions and having sort of that space in which people can feel like they're doing things and feel like they're being recognized for things that they're doing is something that I'd really like to bring back to research culture at Leeds.

So, I guess my question, if you don't mind me asking is OK, you're going to be more intentional about those kind of micro inclusions. But what does that take from someone like does a person need an entire personality transplant in order to be able to do this? Is this a behaviour? Is it an attribute? if research culture is built on people and people need to recognise other people. What do people need to be like and what do they need to be doing in order to make this change happen?

Not to throw buzzword collaboration in there, but I think people need to be more open to collaborating and having those wider conversations and thinking back to the politics of research culture events, that we had and how effective that felt and how important that was in terms of people being able to get out all of their frustrations, but then also come away with something that was tangible at least to the people in that room. And so I think a big part of you know

doing that inclusion and recognition work sort of interlinks itself with also hosting events and doing things that make people feel more included.

And hey, that gives me the great opportunity to remind everyone about the politics of research culture group that I'm able to be a part of and the report from that workshop will actually be coming out soon. So that was not a set up, but Malaika you did it perfectly. I'll pay you later. So, yeah, I think that's great, know, to remember that actually, and I think this is something that Shareefa was saying as well earlier, that like we are a community and that's what's going to drive the change. You can have that top-down suggestions and recommendations and mandates but people are the most important thing and actually if we can do those micro inclusions that's one great step forward and actually you don't need a personality transplant you just need to collaborate as Malaika said so I think that's a really really great takeaway. I mean Shareefa what about you? What are you taking away in your everyday practice from this conference?

Well, I think following Malaika, this is perfect because it falls into this workshop that I was co facilitating and it was with the RCEN reward and recognition, which is I co-lead on that group. And our session's all about the invisible and the visible and a lot of the work that happens within research, within institutions, is a mix between the two. The person that is visible is not usually the person that did ninety percent of the work, maybe ten percent of the work. And so just recognizing everyone else. And there were two main things that within that workshop that were a highlight for me. One was that we asked the participants to consider one of the stakeholders and think about what does recognition mean to those people.

So looking at funders, what does recognition look like to them? looking at community partners, and it just highlighted how most of the reward or recognition people seek is not financial, as everyone would think. It's more of just recognizing the effort, the support, the collaboration, as Malaika said, that they were part of this research and that the impact will change their lives. And I think they're even just putting their logo if they're a community centre at the end of a slide saying they were our partners makes a difference to these people, to to everyone, because it means that we were recognized for the work or for the contributions that we've added. we ended the session with an admiration circle, which was more of just look to the person next to you or someone within your group and say one nice thing. I admire most about you this. and it was very interesting how people created more connections through that sentence than the discussion that was happening. Because we framed it as, you know, they could have said a word that resonated with you, they could have said something that is in relation to the work that you're doing, that is a recognition. so just look at them and say “I admire that you said this because it resonates with me” or it “connects to the work that I'm doing”. And thank them. You know, a simple thank you sometimes gets a long way. And going back to your question, how do we bridge? It's just I think recognizing as one of the things that builds and creates the collaboration that we want to create going forward.

I love the admiration circle idea. I think that's so good. I often think a little bit about things that I do kind of outside of work in community spaces and we talk quite a lot about having moments of attunement where you may be at the start of a meeting or at the end of a meeting you kind of sit and reflect and you think what's the purpose of why I'm doing this work but that's so individual. I love it but you it's always individual because you're like why am I doing this work but actually something that is just like why am I doing it with you guys would be really valuable. I'm noting that down. I think that's a really great example. So what is it that you're taking away, Taryn, for your practice?

I feel like I'm gonna sound incredibly practical after Malaika and Shareefa. but honestly, I've just got a long list of work I need to do after my session coming on from that. You know, we've got we've got a draft statement we need to work on. I'm really looking forward to taking it back to the wider working group and getting their thoughts on it. But I always need I don't know about the rest of you, always need a couple of weeks to chew through what happened during a session before you can really take it to someone. but it was so nice to go to a conference where I really felt like I came out of it with something I can do at the end of it. Because if I'm very honest, the last couple of years at conferences, I've I've been to a few conferences where I kind of came out at the end and thought I felt that just like that just reiterated everything I already knew. I didn't find that the case for the research culture conference.

And we won't ask you to name names of the conferences where that was the case. But I think, yeah, it's nice to have a mix of practical stuff and purpose as well. I think that's it. A to-do list without purpose is pretty pointless. It's just demoralizing, isn't it? But also purpose without a to-do list. think some of the tensions that Shareefa was describing, which is, OK, we get these mandates. We get told what we're going to do. But with who and what's my purpose and what's the connection and the feeling like I think you need both I think you need you need that drive and you need the thing that you're being driven towards I think I think Shareefa talks about the journey and the destination how do we how do we bring those two together and I'm feeling a bit like the contributions that the three of you've made give us maybe a bit of a blueprint for that I'm hoping and you're great because you're in my team and we're all working together so we could just do it together but hopefully our listeners have also taken some some great things away as well.

So I think this is a really great place to end. So I just want to kind of thank my guests, Taryn, Malaika and Shareefa today for joining me and thank you also to the audience for listening and to just, you know, labour a metaphor. Whether we're talking about rivers, bears or research culture, know, thriving ecosystems don't happen by accident. They depend on connection and support and making space for everyone to flourish.

So I'm going to end the podcast here and say to the audience, see you next time and may your ideas be as well nourished as a Katmai bear in October.