In this episode of the Research Culture Uncovered podcast, host Dr Taryn Bell talks with Dr Sara Shinton and Dr Katie Nicoll Baines from the Future Leaders Fellows Development Network. Together, they discuss how the FLFDN enables future research leaders, supports institutions across the UK and helps shape a more collaborative and collegiate research culture.

Key highlights:

1️⃣ Enabling, rather than training, researchers - Sara and Katie share examples of the support the Network offers to Future Leaders Fellows, and discuss the importance of helping researchers to develop their own resources and support

2️⃣ Researcher support as an iterative process - in other words, learning from Fellows what works, and proactively responding to their needs

3️⃣ Advocating for open-access support for institutions - Sara and Katie discuss how they provide freely available support for a wide variety of institutions, particularly those who don't currently have a Future Leaders Fellow.

Want to know more?

• FLF Development Network website
• Enabling Future Leaders (support for aspiring and current host institutions)
• FLFDN Toolkits Hub
• UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships

All of our episodes can be accessed via the following playlists: 

• Research Impact with Ged Hall (follow Ged on Bluesky and LinkedIn)
• Research Impact Heroes with Ged Hall
• Open Research with Nick Sheppard (follow Nick on Bluesky and LinkedIn)
• Research Careers with Ruth Winden (follow Ruth on Bluesky and LinkedIn)
• Research talent management
• Meet the Research Culturositists with Emma Spary (follow Emma on Bluesky and LinkedIn)
• Research co-production
• Research evaluation
• Research leadership
• Research professionals
• Academic failure with Taryn Bell (follow Taryn on Bluesky and LinkedIn)

Follow us on Bluesky: @researcherdevleeds.bsky.social (new episodes are announced here), @openresleeds.bsky.social, @researchcultureuol.bsky.social

Connect to us on LinkedIn: @ResearchUncoveredPodcast (new episodes are announced here)

If you would like to contribute to a podcast episode get in touch: researcherdevelopment@leeds.ac.uk

Welcome to the Research Culture Uncovered podcast, where in every episode we explore what is research culture and what should it be. You'll hear thoughts and opinions from a range of contributors to help you change research culture into what you wanted to be.

In universities, we often focus on supporting researchers before they apply for funding.

But what happens when they get that funding? What support is offered then, and how do we ensure as a sector that we're supporting researchers and research institutions to realize their potential and enjoy what they do? Today I'm delighted to be joined by Sara Shinton and Katie Nicoll Baines from the Future Leaders Fellows Development Network or FLF Development Network.

Sara is the Director of the Network. She's worked in researcher development and culture since the 1990s. Both as a freelancer and as the former head of researcher development at the University of Edinburgh. She also co-wrote the Collaborative Welcome In-Frame Project with Kay Guccione, looking at collegiate leadership across the universities of Glasgow, St.

Andrews and Edinburgh. Katie is the People, Culture and Environment Manager for the network. She's a specialist on a range of matters relating to research and innovation culture, including equality, diversity and inclusion (or EDI) research integrity and sustainability. She has expertise in researching barriers to career progression experienced by women and LGBT+ people related to grant funding.

So, welcome to Research Culture Uncovered!

Thank you. It's lovely to be here, Taryn.

Yeah, delighted. Looking forward to the conversation.

Sara, let's start with you. In 2020, you led the team that bid for and was awarded the contract to deliver the FLF Development Network. Could you tell me a little bit more about what the network is and what it does?

So we are funded by UKRI and our remit is to support the UKRI's Future Leader Fellows. So on one level, quite a tight remit. However, we do much more than that because both Katie and I and everybody else who's involved in our network has been part of this sector. We've got jobs in universities. We've worked in research and innovation, and from

quite an early point in the network, we wanted it to do more than that. So on one level we provide leadership development and opportunities to the FLFs as we tend to call them. But on another level, we're trying to use the resources of the network to have a much broader and deeper impact right across the sector and supporting the sort of people who are listening to this.

And Katie, could you tell us a little bit more about your role within the network?

Yeah, so my role has evolved in the time that the network has existed. Initially I was titled the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Manager. And my remit spanned embedding inclusive practices across all the activities of the network.

And this looked like writing policy, developing bespoke training on certain topics, working with our different. At different elements of our program to embed ways of working that ensured that we were maximizing diversity and opportunities for the fellows in the cohort. As the role evolved and as I got more embedded in what we were doing, it became clear that the kind of responsibilities and directions that I was being pulled in were a bit more,

I suppose, further reaching than just EDI. And that's why as of January this year, we rebranded my role as People, Culture and Environment manager. Because what my responsibility has kind of come to be is elements relating to the support and development of people, both for the fellows themselves and the teams that they support and are responsible for, the wider cultures that they find themselves moving into, and that might be the culture of their institution, um, or more broadly the culture of their disciplines, because our fellows represent all different disciplines that UKRI funds. Um, and then I suppose the wider environment of research and how that features into the ways in which you conduct your research and other concepts relating to that.

Uh, so yeah, it's, it's been a journey.

Yeah. And, and what I'm hearing from both of you is that I think often when we talk about researcher development, people equate that, with just training. But I think what I'm hearing from you both is that actually good researcher development is a lot more broader than just putting on a few workshops here and there.

So with that in mind, could you give some examples of the kinds of support that you offer as part of the network?

I think you've absolutely hit it on the head there, because for me, there is a proportion of the development that we can make happen through workshops, through formal training, but so much more is about the way that the fellows conduct themselves and grow and develop.

So some of the examples of other things that we offer are access to mentors, to coaching. We do a 360 feedback round so that they get those perspectives from all the people around them, uh, we give them funding to do things that they feel will enhance their leadership and the cultures that they operate in.

So there's a funding element to it. We encourage them to produce resources and. If anybody looks at our website, you'll see there's a section of the website, which is about fellow developed resources. So it's much bigger than that. But we all knew that anyway. Researcher development has never just been about the workshops and the training.

It's always about the conversations we have. It's about enabling them. It's about advocating for researchers when you're in spaces that they aren't. So it's always been a much richer profession than perhaps people saw it as. Um, and we've just been able to bring all that experience, not just from me, but from all of the partners and try and come up with something that really covers it in all those different ways. But Katie will know of, some deeper examples. So I'm gonna let her dig into some of that detail.

So I think one point I would make here is that something that's quite unique about our network is because we are tasked with this very specific cohort of fellows in a very specific context.

So they've got a quite secure funding. They've got in theory, quite secure positions that come with that funding and a lot of responsibility and a lot of, I suppose, expectation placed on them because of this concept of being called a Future Leader Fellow. But that cohort community is something that we recognize as being really valuable both to them and also for opportunities for their development.

And so, and Sara tapped into this in the example she shared around how we support them to develop their own resources with our support, our awareness of that cohort uniqueness is what drives, how well tailored the support we provide is. So we have opportunities for them to speak to sector leaders and with particular expertise.

I'm just one of a few people in our team that they can talk to about particular challenges. We have colleagues with expertise in public engagement, in knowledge exchange, in innovation and. And developing on key areas. Um, and then that. Flexible funding that Sara mentioned. This is, was designed with the ethos of adding to what our network already does, but with the recognition that actually we want that to be driven by what the fellows recognize that they need.

We don't want we obviously are experts themselves and we have a good sense of what they should need, but we recognize that as a cohort, they will develop their own identity, they will develop their own needs, and so they come to us with the things that they care about. And some examples of that have included their own podcast series where they've platformed and championed the research insights from particular individual researchers.

There's a project that's just finished looking at the impact of having caring responsibilities as a researcher. Uh, and they conducted research in that area. There's a toolkit that has been built on how to support people in emotionally demanding research careers. And again, all of this has been funded by our network, but the ideas came from the fellows and we've supported them to implement those processes and projects with the sort of wraparound support and we've also learned from the process ourselves and constantly iterated on how we interact with them and how we best support them with this. While it is a competitive funding process, it's not something that we want them to leave having not learned anything and just, had the sort of stressful application process where they maybe don't necessarily succeed. Where they have had challenges, we've supported them to kind of to grow and develop. So everything effectively, everything in what we do is a development opportunity.

I think there's something here that's actually really important, and again, it reflects on how important the profession of been a researcher developer is because the cohort was the original driver from UKRI.

They'd funded all these individual fellowships. They wanted to see if they were greater than the sum of their parts, and that's what the network really was striving to achieve, is to demonstrate that when you bring people together and you create opportunities and you provide resources so they can do things together, we get so much more and I think that that's often forgotten in the researcher development profession, the number of times that you and I will have stood at the front of a room and seen conversations happening, that would not have happened. We've created a space in which people can feel safe and they've got a shared experience and the trust that they build and the trust that we build from the front of the room means that actually you create all these micro opportunities for wonderful conversations and the things that follow.

So I think the cohort element is I suppose the distinctiveness for us is we work with them for years, whereas traditionally in researcher development you may see them now and again, but we, we are gonna work with them very closely for years and years and see those things come really to fruition.

And just to build on that concept of responsiveness as well. That's something that we really strive to do, is while we have a program of activities available to this cohort that we, that we know work well for them and that they have an appetite for, we are constantly iterating on that.

And responding to the needs of the fellows as they come to us and also as the sector evolves and changes, with new and emerging challenges. Um, and so building in that possibility for responsiveness is something that I've seen as being really important to how we operate.

And I think it's also a responsibility that we carry because we are aware of the fact that our resourcing is different.

We're aware of the fact that, you know, we've got the ability to be quite agile and flexible and that really we should be doing that because we can, but we should also be sharing what we're doing as much as we can so that the rest of the sector is gonna benefit from it.

And I think this is where FLF as a scheme offers quite unique opportunities.

So for those of you listening who aren't too familiar with the FLF scheme, it's a potential seven years of funding, it's open to people from any discipline. So as you talked about, getting people together in a room, and it's quite a unique opportunity to get people who would otherwise never meet in a room as well.

You're bringing these people together on the regular in a way that I imagine is really beneficial, actually.

So before we move on to thinking about as you said Sara support across the sector, what feedback have you had from the fellows themselves about the support on offer?

So we, obviously, we we're a, we are a consultancy contract, so we are constantly seeking feedback to make sure that we can reassure UKRI that we, we are doing a good job.

I mean, very positive. There are always things that they suggest, but generally we get a very, very positive response. But that is because we designed it with them in mind. You know, the partners in this consortium are the employers. Of many, many, you know, more, I think between us, more than a hundred FLFs work at the partner institutions.

So we know this community really well anyway. Um, and so we designed it with them in mind. Also, many of us have worked with them during the preparation of their proposals. I, I was involved in numerous proposals, helping them think about leadership, helping them think about team development.

So we knew what was coming. The other thing is, of course, that we sit as part of the selection process, that a couple of us have been rovers on this scheme. And for those listening who don't understand what this is, is that the panels run in parallel and there is an observer for every panel, making sure that there's a consistency and that peer review is safeguarded.

So it's all done in a fair, equitable way. And so we've, we've just got this incredible richness. So yes, the feedback is really positive. But the other thing is that, that when we are at events with, with them, we are talking to them, we are understanding what the challenges are. We also have feedback coming in, in anonymous terms through things like we get a coaching summary where we get the headlines of the sorts of things that are coming up.

And through the one-to-one work, Katie mentioned, she's one of our managers who does one-to-ones. We hear things from them in that direction as well. So we've got these, yes, the feedback's good, but also the feedback's good because we are really listening and seeking to understand them at every turn.

And there's the interactions I have with fellows, I'm often quite honest and I ask them, you know, what were your expectations or your perhaps reservations coming into participating in one of our activities? And it's not unusual for them to note a healthy dose of skepticism when it comes to their perspective on leadership training, because I think a lot of them have been exposed to various forms of leadership training in other spaces and perhaps within their institutions or in other organisations that they belong to. Because these, I think another important thing to add here is these fellows are not just in universities.

They could be in companies, in businesses, in small, in startups and things like that, and charities. So the variation of support and what's available to them will be a lot of difference and in quality and in content, and it's invariably the case that they come away from our events saying "That was different. That was, that showed a real awareness of our situation." And sometimes the value is just. In the fact that they've been in the room with people like them for the first time, rather than in just a cohort of people who fit the sort of aspiring leader concept. It's actually people who are going through the same things as them, and that's hugely beneficial to them.

And then on more specific examples we have them sharing how they find navigating our flexible funding program far more accessible than other processes that they've seen before. Um, and even. Even in the cases where they're not successful in getting funding with us, they still are grateful for the feedback and, you know, they continue to engage.

And so I think that's a testament to how well we handle things, um, even when it isn't necessarily the most positive experience.

It sounds like it's, it's quite an iterative process, you know, it's not just here's our, here's what we've developed and we are gonna implement it. It's that kind of constant feedback process as well, which is probably why we at Leeds hear such good feedback from the fellows and how what they've got out of the network too.

And I think it also speaks to what we've found as well in our work at Leeds is that it's so important to be able to create these spaces for researchers to get together and be in the room, not with people who are experts in their field, but who know what they're going through anyway, who are at a similar career stage, going through the same pressures and, and the same issues, and so on and so forth.

As you alluded to earlier, the network doesn't just support fellows as well. You also create resources and provide support to staff who are kind of supporting research development, uh, either in in host organisations or aspiring host organisations. So what was the motivation behind this and what kind of support do you offer?

I was a freelancer for an awful long time. I worked outside an organization for 17 years. And it used to really upset me when I couldn't get my hands on things. So it, so if we're looking for the less than noble reason is that, that just, that, that remembering of what it was like when you're, you're trying to do this where you're maybe in a smaller institution that doesn't have the resources that the bigger institutions have.

And just thinking, I just wish this stuff was freely available. So I think that was a real driving force from the beginning. And also I've worked at the University of Edinburgh since 2017, but I didn't go to a Russell Group University. You know, the resources that we have, even in these straitened times, are immense.

And, but I went to a university that had nothing like those resources, so I think there was a bit of a moral responsibility as well of just thinking we, we've gotta pay this forward, because one, there are people out there that we should be enabling and supporting. We worked really hard to get this bid.

We worked really hard to maintain this contract. You know, we take very seriously the responsibility of delivering this. But also it's a huge privilege and we should be sharing that privilege.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's funding from UKRI, which comes from the taxpayer, right? This money, while it is dedicated to this very specific cohort, the opportunity should ultimately be possible for everyone to engage in.

And so if we're not giving back based on what we have learned from interacting with this cohort, then we are kind of, you know, hoarding the wealth in a way that wouldn't sit. So it wouldn't sit right with my ethics on a personal level, but I also think it's just, it's important to reduce

The challenge of competitiveness in this space, because ultimately it's still a competition to get one of these fellowships. But if we can share the wealth and insight into how you get one and how you support one to thrive, then hopefully we're sharing out that opportunity. And so when we started doing this, I guess, host focused engagement work in a more comprehensive way, now, just over two years ago it was deliberate in us seeking out connections with those institutions that have perhaps only one or no fellows. So that we were reaching in and, and trying to understand their context as well. Because while we can share the resources that we've designed for this, again, unique cohort, we want to know if they are useful to other spaces and they need to feel able to engage with that resource and then suggest things to us or tell us how they're using it. So I had, a great experience recently, thanks to being delayed traveling to a conference where I arrived late for the first session. And my plan for attending the conference was to talk about our resources and network and share flyers showing off our toolkits, um, to the community that was at this conference.

And as I walked into this session late, the Q&A was happening, uh, and another colleague in the room was already talking about our toolkits and telling the rest of the room how useful they were. And that was a really pleasant surprise. But also a nice insight into the fact that okay, obviously they're being recognized in, in a useful way. Um, and hopefully that's something that we can continue to build on.

Yeah, and those toolkits are something I recommend to people a lot actually. So what I will do is I will make sure links to those toolkits are in the show notes for anyone listening to have a look at. So if we have anyone listening who is say at a host organization that only has, like you say, one or maybe not any FLFs right now, and they haven't engaged with the network yet, how would you encourage them to do so?

Go and look at our website. Go and look at the section of our website, which is about enabling research leaders. That's where we've got all the host stuff, and if you do nothing else, just sign up for our newsletter, but we hope you do more than that.

We, we hope that you connect with us because we share with UKRI, the vision of making the FLF community as diverse as possible because the, the challenges that they are addressing in societal and, and, you know, global terms are incredibly diverse. It, it can't just be solved from a small number of disciplines, from a small number of institutions.

So if you haven't gone for an FLF before. You'll see a lot of the resources there are about enabling you to put stronger applications in.

By the time this goes out, I'll have delivered a couple of open sessions, one of which will have been at Birmingham City University, and that was a very deliberate choice. One, the opportunity to work with Arifa there, who's amazing, but also it was going into a post-92 organization and saying, FLFs are for you.

Let's talk about what they are and let's try and make sure that you, you are positioned as well as possible for that.

When this episode airs, we will probably have finished the registration window for in-person attendees at our next, what we are now calling a host summit.

Thanks to our fantastic events manager for giving it that name. But it's an opportunity for colleagues in the spaces of research and leadership development to come together. That's taking place on the 11th and 12th of February in Leeds, in 2026. There might be some in-person places available, so do check that out.

And it will be on those same web pages that Sara has mentioned, so on in the enabling future leaders, uh, section. Of our resources tab on the website. Um, so check that out. If there are no in-person spaces available, there will be online option to attend. And we will have full hybrid capacity.

And I have a very strong commitment to making our hybrid element of these conferences as true to participating in person as possible. I'm hiring dedicated facilitators alongside myself to support the bridging of that space. Um, and our workshops will be designed to be interactive, but if you are there in person and as well as online, we are limited in, in terms of the number of in-person spaces because we are fully funding everybody to be there so that there is no barrier to attendance for financial reasons.

So yes, please come to our host summit in Leeds in February 2026. And if you can't make it then, just get in touch with us.

hello@flfdevnet.com is our email address. And just ask, I think one of the things that I've seen in this space of the disparate resourcing of opportunity is that those with less resource feel less able to ask for help. And this is really just an invitation for you to engage with us and ask for more insight.

If you feel you don't have it, we can't promise that we can give you all of the answers, and we can't necessarily fix all of the challenges that you are facing. But we can certainly have a conversation and see what's possible.

And at the risk of starting a world tour, that's the basis of the event that I will have run a couple of weeks before this goes out, met Arifa at a conference. Uh, I was talking about the fact that we wanted to reach, into other types of organisations and particularly organisations that didn't have a lot of FLFs. And she said, well, will you come and do something for us? And I went, yeah.

It's genuine. We do want to make a difference in the sector and you know, and, and we can only do that if we are working with the people who need that difference.

And I think some of what, um, Katie talked a little bit about pressures on certain institutions. I think that's something that's in my thoughts a lot at the moment because there are a lot of financial pressures in the higher education sector as a whole, and the, I know that at an internal level at many universities, this is putting a real strain on the support that institutions feel that they can

Offer researchers, both those applying for funding and those who've who've been successful in applying for funding. So how is this affecting what fellows and institutions are asking of you as a network?

So we're beginning to see this coming. I mean, I suppose part of me just feels, um, as you alluded, I've, I've been in this for a very long time, a very long time, uh, probably longer than some people listening to this will have been alive.

This is cyclical. We get this all the time where we, we have periods where there is you know, maybe not an abundance, but there are periods when the sector has the resources to do things. And there are periods when the sector doesn't have the resources to do things. And actually, this is why I think.

This is something we'd like to do at the moment is where there are these tensions and this tightening that we actually keep kind, trying to keep things moving in the sector, keep trying to innovate, keep trying to keep that going so that as this recovers, as we recover as a sector and as there's more capacity, we've kept things going and there are things there. So I think that's, that's one point to make is this happens all the time. Where we are seeing it with the fellows is, we work very closely with the UKRI post-award team and what happens is, uh, and it's, it's perhaps worth just taking a moment to know, what a brilliant team they are.

And I don't think that many people appreciate how much support you can get from a funder post award. You know, often we have fellows who come to us and go, "oh, I don't think you can help with this, but you know, this is happening" and we'll go "go and talk to the post-award team". They will really do everything they can to support the fellow because they are protecting their investment.

So if you're listening to this as a researcher where something, you know, a promise has been broken or a resource that you thought you were gonna have isn't available anymore, or just go and talk to your funder and don't see this as something that you have to be ashamed about or hide. So I think that's the first thing is, this culture is not just about us, and I think we have a really positive culture around the Development Network, but there's also a really positive culture around the team that we work with at at UKRI. So where are we seeing it? We're seeing it in terms of reduced offer at application point. So whereas a few years ago, institutions were offering, you know, a PhD studentship or access to this programme or, you know, we'll, you know, we'll pay for you to go overseas and do something with another, you know, whatever it was.

We're seeing that being pulled back and let's be honest, that is, that is fair. The FLFs do get this huge privilege and you're right, it's a seven year award that's full time. It can be even longer than that part-time. So this is a long-term investment. These people get a lot of resource and, and there is a lot of privilege.

So I think, I don't personally have a problem with institutions saying we need to make sure that we are enabling and supporting as broad a group of people as possible. The challenges where the FLFs have constructed their research vision around those resources. And again, we're starting to see some something here where there are changes in an institution, those resources may not be available.

But again, what we are trying to do is to support the FLF to go to UKRI have that conversation and then look to find the resolution. And it may not be what they had to start with. But there is always a resolution.

And I think because of our dynamic nature, the way we are responsive to emerging needs for the fellows, we're already well set up to support them through these kinds of challenging times.

And it might be on a smaller scale where their institution has paused promotions, and that means a promised next step for them now doesn't look as visible on the horizon. That's where our coaching offer could step in and we could support them on a particular challenge that they wanna work on in the meantime.

Or it might be that a new and unexpected issue has arisen for them, um, and we can support them with different expertise on actually how to see a challenge as a new opportunity. And so reframing and repositioning is something that we are constantly doing ourselves, and we can share that with the fellows who are on the ground experiencing these things, be it for themselves or for their teams.

And I think that's a key thing at this moment is where they're, you know, they've got staff on their fellowships that they are responsible for, that they're now seeing not the same kinds of opportunities emerging for them to follow on and go on and progress to. But because of our wide reach, we can support them to, to develop in other directions.

I should also just come in and say, of course our FLFs are not just in the academic sector. Um, and because we engage with our industry and our commercial and our charity fellows as well, there are different issues there. And one of the issues that we've been talking with about a small group of fellows is how difficult it is if you're in a small organization or a big one, and it changes its direction whilst you are on a seven year fellowship looking for one particular thing. So we're seeing this as well, that the market realities impact on our fellows as well. It's the same approach. It's talking to the post-award team.

It's looking to see what is now feasible, deliverable, what should be in place anyway and you know, really trying to make sure that the host does everything they can, but there's also that flexibility. So it, it's not just our academic FLFs, it's all of them, but again, we, it's case by case basis.

So there's all this amazing work that you've done so far, and if you, I think if we step back and look at what's been achieved so far it feels like the FLF Development Network is constantly developing and changing and offering new things.

So Katie, what does the future look like for the network in terms of what comes next?

I think this is a good opportunity for me to first highlight how, how well the network has evolved, even in just the time that I've been part of it.

So I got involved in 2022. It was already existing since 2020, um, on what was initially a very small number of people making it incredibly successful. So Bridget Mellifont, who is our Deputy Director and Programmes Manager, has been there from the start with Sara, um, and with the rest of our strategic creative group who have been really instrumental in setting a framework for what the Development nNtwork should look like.

As of basically January into sort of March this year, we've managed to fully establish a full team of full-time staff that make possible the, this comprehensive offering, um, that we deliver. So we have three full-time admin staff, we have a project manager, we have a full-time events manager. And a number of other consultants working on particular areas like innovation management, knowledge exchange, mentoring supporting the delivery of our leadership development program and all sorts of other things.

Who do who are really our leaders and experts in their particular discipline. And without all of that, it wouldn't be possible to do the things that we do. We, one of the things that we've realized we want more support with is somebody to support us with comms and the development of our sort of messaging.

And that's something that will be emerging in, into next year. We're also really keen to be developing the individuals in our team. We work with some really talented people who have skills that they want to develop that already add to what we do. Um, and so that's something that we're investing in at the moment that I think will help us to launch us, and keep us established as such a functioning, uh, mechanism as to what the Development Network looks like in the future. I suppose that's related to what the FLF programme and the scheme continues to look like. Sara might be able to comment on that further because of her closer relationship with colleagues at UKRI.

But for me, I think it's about seeing opportunities for where we can bring in expertise where it's needed and continue to. To develop what we have already that really makes it so successful.

I mean, echoing all of everything Katie just said, particularly the shout out to Bridget, who you know, is, is is the FLFDN in a way that nobody else is.

She lives and breathes it and has done since we were writing the proposal. So yes, we will continue to bid. To get this because it's a competitive tender, we'll continue to bid. We'll, at some point in the next year or so, there's gonna be another tender. So we will, we are committed to continuing.

That won't be our decision, but we will commit to continuing. But we, we move with the sector. So there's a few developments and a few things happening at the moment that we are responding to. I think the first and most obvious one is the fact that there was the report into clinical academics and the fact that we need to develop that community.

Mm-hmm. And we need more opportunities in that area based on the Oscar report. So within the clinical space there, there is obviously this drive for us to invest more in clinical academics, and we are currently talking to a number of other funders of clinical academics to work out what it is that that community needs and whether or not we play a part in that and how we can collaborate with them.

Those conversations are very live at the moment, but as we create the ideas, we will be sharing them. In the same way we share everything else. And it's worth noting that Simon Mitchell, one of our FLFs, has written a resource aimed at clinical academics, which is about his experience of setting up the Sussex Cancer Research Centre.

So we already have clinical academics, but we feel we could be, we need to know that we can't do more for them. So we're exploring that at the moment. The other area where we are sort of trying to understand what the right thing to do is is around AI, because that is just so you know, important now.

A couple of years ago, a group of our fellows asked for funding to develop some resource around AI and its applications, and we funded that and that was a great project and they put a wiki together. Um, and we're also thinking about that, that we at the FLF conference, the UKRI FLF conference that we wrote in the summer most of the speakers who were, you know, those senior people in, in, in UKRI we're talking about it and saying that we need to be thinking about this.

And it was really fascinating that around the table that Katie and I were sitting at, there was somebody from that group who had been involved in this project saying, "I use it for everything". And as we went round the table, there was somebody saying, "oh, I don't use it for anything. It feels like cheating".

And we've, you know, this community have got to engage with these tools. It's like saying, you know, oh, I don't use a computer. That's cheating. You know, we do that every day. So I think that moving with our fellows and making sure that we are supporting them with how, how we work as researchers and innovators.

And so that, those are two examples, the clinical side, thinking about ai. Um, and there will be other things. One of the other things actually, that we are just in the very early stages of talking about is about hostility in the media to some research topics and we are looking at that as, and potentially thinking we're gonna run an event next year, which is gonna focus on that.

I mean unfortunately we're in a very polarized society and people who are often not terribly well informed will jump on a bandwagon and shout and be quite abusive. And we want to support our fellows because they are doing work that is changing lives and changing minds, and some minds do not like being changed.

So I, I, those are just examples, but Taryn to be honest, they come from our fellows and they come from our colleagues like you. You know, if we were at a meeting and somebody says, "oh, somebody should be doing something about this", our little ears prick up and we go, "right? Could that be us?" And I hope that people listening to this think about that.

Is there something we've missed that we could make a difference on? Because we'd like the opportunity to explore that.

So let's leave this just on a final thought from both of you. What do you think others in the researcher development and research culture space could learn from the FLF Development Network model?

So I, I suppose, sort of broadening a little bit more is, is when I started in researcher development, there was no researcher development. There was no Roberts money. And some of you, some of your listeners won't even know what that is, but you know, there was a big injection of cash from the government in the early two thousands to support researchers, their skills, their developments, and uh, and it was all aligned.

This is the beginning of this movement. What can you do as a researcher developer? I think if you're listening to this and thinking, I'd like to, then do, because this all began with me going after tiny pots of money, going after little projects, not respecting the boundaries of my job, trespassing in other spaces and thinking, I've got something to say in these spaces, and it continues to this day.

You know, I think if you can see something that could be done better, there are resources and there are ways of doing it, and some of them involve money and you know, arguably we, we are in the pinnacle of that, you know, a huge investment in leadership development in research and innovation. But it began with getting a few thousand pounds.

What's interesting is that I first met Katie in 2018. When Katie came on a programme that I ran, which was funded by the Scottish government to support women in research and science and innovation, and I got some money from the Scottish government and it was a program called Ingenious Women, which was a program I'd been running with my good friend Janet Wilkinson for many years.

And that was the beginning. And through that I met Katie and immediately was impressed by her and sort of, kept in touch with her and this is where we are. But that began with just thinking, "I want to roll this out. I want to do more, I want to push this boundary." And I would just say that you can do that in lots of different ways.

I didn't go from just being, a researcher, developer, or a careers advisor, which I've also been to running, you know, a 10 million pound plus network. There are steps on the way. Take the first step, have a play. It's brilliant. It's such fun doing this sort of work. It's really rewarding. It's difficult, but it's exciting.

And so if you like, if you like difficult but exciting, come and have a play.

And I think a strong thing that we get to do is learn from our community that we support. And we are in a, the Development Network is in a, I suppose, particularly privileged position because we are well resourced and we are working with a very discreet cohort.

It's not, you know, any possible researcher in an institution. But where you can, I think prioritizing learning the needs of your community will make your practice as a researcher, developer, or leadership developer or any practitioner in this space, more successful. Because the material that you produce for them, anything that you are devising that will support their journey will land much better if you've taken the time to understand that community, you know what's going to be received well by them if you've taken the time to ask. And that can be a matter of doing what Sara's just suggested, which is taking that first step, trying something out, and then inviting comment, inviting understanding of whether it has worked for them or could they see it working for them.

And also just be patient because sometimes the impact of what we are delivering to these research leaders takes time to, to bed in. And that's a piece of feedback that I hear often from our fellows is they've come on one of our leadership retreats and then several months later they've had a eureka moment where it's like, "oh, now I'm using this thing that was told to me months ago."

And it was just the right time for them to embed some of that practice.

And again, we, we are lucky to have this ongoing relationship with the fellows where they do come back to us and we can revisit and we can hear from them how they're doing. Um, and so if you don't have that reinforcement, it can be hard to keep going. But just try and continue because it is having an important impact in so many ways.

That is all we have time for today. Thank you both so much for coming to chat with me. It's been an absolute pleasure.

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