In our Research Culture Uncovered conversations we are asking what is Research Culture and why does it matter? In this episode, our host Nick Sheppard talks to Benjamin Tendler, Maddie Welland and Karla Miller about their Lab Handbook initiative at the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging in Oxford.

We discuss how they have pioneered the implementation of a lab handbook within the WIN physics group to promote a positive research culture, interdisciplinary communication and inclusion.

The main points include:

• Purpose and concept of the lab handbook to outline the ethos and culture of a lab or research group.
• Benefits of the initiative such as promoting positive research culture and inclusion, clarifying expectations and preventing misunderstandings, and supporting mental health and wellbeing.
• The value of collaboration in all areas of research culture from the development of a handbook, to the practice of science itself and the dissemination of research results and data.

In this episode we mention several links including:

• The Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging
• Benjamin C Tendler, Maddie Welland, Karla L Miller, The WIN Handbook Team (2023) Research Culture: Why every lab needs a handbook eLife 12:e88853. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.88853
• Lab Handbook Resources

This episode of Research Culture Uncovered © 2024 by Research Culturosity is licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0 

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

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• Research talent management with Tony Bromley (follow Tony on Twitter and LinkedIn)
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Leeds Research Culture links:

• Researcher Development and Culture Website
• Our Concordat Implementation plans and progress
• University of Leeds Research Culture Statement
• University of Leeds Responsible Metrics Statement
• University of Leeds Open Research Statement
• University of Leeds Research Culture Strategy - launched September 2023

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 want it to be.

Hi, it's Nick Open research advisor, based in the

library here at the University of Leeds. For this episode of the research

Culture Uncovered podcast, I'm very pleased to be joined by not one,

not two, but three colleagues, Benjamin Tendler, Maddy Welland

and Karla Miller from the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging at the

University of Oxford. We're talking about their Lab Handbook

initiative, which, as we'll hear, is a flexible document that outlines the ethos

of a research lab or group. I've linked their article for

elife in the show notes below, but before you download

that over to Ben, Maddy and

Karla.So I'll ask them to introduce

themselves first. I'll start with you, Benjamin, if that's okay, and

perhaps give me a quick introduction of who you are and what you do

at WIN, and perhaps also exactly what is integrative

neuroimaging. Bearing in mind I'm a layperson and don't really know what that involves.

Yeah, sure, I'd be delighted to do that. So, my official

role at the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging is as

a research fellow. So more officially, my current title is a Sir

Henry Wellcome postdoctoral fellow, which effectively means that I've been

provided with some funding and resources in order to establish my

own independent research program. So, with respect to my

research, my background is in physics and I currently use my

background and experience in physics within the field of neuroscience.

So currently my research focuses on developing methods to

image the brain using magnetic resonance imaging or MRI. These

are scanners, which you'll find dotted in hospitals and research settings across

the UK and globally as well. From

the perspective of things outside of my research,

something which I'm really interested in is trying to improve the environment in which research

is performed, and that's what has led me to get involved

with the lab handbook initiative itself. So,

with respect to interpretive neuroimaging,

the way which I think about this is typically about how we

can perform investigations of the brain across multiple different domains and

scales. So from my perspective, if we think about

how a typical or canonical

neuroscience or brain investigation is done, you might have a

research question of interest about the brain, and you might go about this

investigation by performing a study involving, say,

one modality. And if you're doing imaging, say, one imaging modality or

performing an investigation in one domain, be that, say, in a human

study or perhaps in a species. Now, one of the

really powerful things at the Wellcome center for Interactive

Neuroimaging is that we have access to a wide variety of different

methods to image the brain. So this includes things such as magnetic resonance

imaging, in addition to other methods to image the brain, such as

magnetic encephalography, and also many different

domains in which we can perform these types of investigations. So we can, for example,

for investigations living people, we also have access to

methods to perform investigations in species and also in things such as post mortem

tissue using microscopy techniques as well.

So when I think of integrative neuroimaging, what I really think is the idea that

rather than just using a single modality or investigative domain, we can actually

leverage information across multiple different domains. So we can combine information,

say, different species, across different scales, across perhaps different populations,

in order to address the questions which

you want to answer with respect to neuroscience, with

really a more comprehensive approach to being able to answer them.

Wow. So that sounds fascinating, and I'd love to talk to you in more detail

about all that stuff, but of course, we're not here to talk about that today.

That is correct. More about the handbook, which we'll come on to in a

moment, but if I can ask you, Maddie, to introduce yourself. So

this is Maddy Welland. Hello. So

I am the Wellcome EDI officer. I've been at the WIN

for three years, but I technically work across all of Oxford's

three Wellcome centres. So I'm connected

to this lab handbook initiative through

our inclusive leadership program, which we've been piloting for a couple

of years, and we'll be working on within the medical

sciences division for the next two. Yeah,

I'll keep it short and sweet. Okay, thanks, Maddie. Thanks. And welcome to the podcast.

And last but not least, Karla Miller. If you could introduce

yourself, please. Yeah. Hi, my name is Karla Miller.

I'm a professor of biomedical engineering. So I run a research

group, relatively large research group of about

30 people. And so maybe later we might talk a bit about

why having such a large research group led me to want to

take on this lab handbook initiative. But that's not my only

role in Oxford. I am associate director

of the WIN, as we call it, the Wellcome center

for Integrative Neuroimaging. And I also have a role

within Oxford more broadly. So in the medical sciences

division, I am the academic lead for

equality, diversity and inclusion, or EDI. And so this is

something that, again, it's a longstanding interest of

mine that intersects strongly with initiatives like the lab handbook that

might initially not seem to have so much to do with equality, diversity and

inclusion. But as we'll talk about later, actually, I think it's one of the more

impactful kinds of projects that we can do to promote positive research

culture, which enables people, regardless of their background or

whether they might initially feel comfortable in a place like Oxford.

It enables them to really flourish and do their best work

because they actually feel included and understood and seen.

Right. No, thank you. And we'll certainly get onto that. And I'm glad you call

it the win, because that means I can as well. I hope you practice

saying integrative neuroimaging because it took all of us a long time for that to

roll off the top. Well, no, as I was saying, I was just. I think

it came out okay. So. No, that's great. You did great. So, no, that's

great. Thanks to you all for those introductions.

And so, Ben, perhaps start with you, really, in terms of

perhaps a quick overview of the Hamburg. You've already given us a crash course

on integrative neuroimaging. I won't say it again, that's

the last time I'll try and say it, but yeah, so perhaps just give us

a quick overview of the handbook, a little bit about its history and

development. Sure, sounds great. So, to us, the lab

handbook is effectively a document which is written at

the research group level by a research group which is

aiming to outline the culture and ethos that the group is

aiming to create. So different groups might approach

the lab handbook initiative in different ways, and they might have things which are

valuable for them, for what they think should be included in a

handbook. But broadly, what I'd say is that a typical lab handbook

would provide information about the roles and expectations of different researchers

within the group at different career stages, the culture that the

research group is able to create, and how the research group supports the

development of individual members from a career's

perspective. So broadly, what I can say is that by doing this,

what we're really aiming to do is to address the many challenges that can often

arise in a research group settings that are due to poor communication

between individual group members and a lab handbook aims to do this by

explicitly defining expectations. So giving everybody an insight

into what you can expect from me and what I can expect from you in

return, providing a consistent and explicit message on

exactly how the lab operates, and by virtue of doing

this, provide accountability for everybody. Within a group, including

people within senior management positions. Okay, great. Thank

you. And just to come to you, Karla, and

ask you, you've already just alluded to this, I think, in your previous

answer, but why did you feel that handbook

was needed? And I suppose interested in your role as in leadership,

as the PI, and you've already sort of said a little bit about that. We

can go say a bit more about why you thought it was needed?

Yeah, so I think. I think...so I've always felt

very strongly that one of the most important things, as a

principal investigator or a lab group leader,

that you have a very important duty to the people in

your group. I do kind of believe that I work for the people in my

group as much as they work for me. Right. We work together, but that there

are different roles that people have. And one of the things that I

realized, although I take my role, I have always

taken my role very seriously. But as I became

a bit, as I took on more responsibility, one of the things that

I realized is that I was not,

I wasn't living up to my own standards in the way that I wanted to.

And that came in a few ways. The most important to me

was I didn't feel like I was achieving consistency of communication

with people when they would join the group. I would start to realize that although

I wanted to have certain conversations with people when they joined, to

be clear with people about my expectations, what I

think they needed to feed back to me, all of that kind of stuff, that

creates a good culture, I was not doing that

consistently. And a lot of that was about the fact that I was just

becoming more and more busy. I just had many, many, many things on my plate

every day. So a big motivation was achieving

consistency of communication. But then along

with that came a lot of other things that the handbook enabled.

So it encouraged people that I wanted

to receive feedback. And we can talk a bit about some of the feedback that

came out of it that I found incredibly helpful, realizing that sometimes

I was communicating a different message than I intended to,

it was really helpful for empowering accountability.

So one of the challenges with running a large group, and in

particular, as you start to get more senior, is people don't...you actually

stop receiving feedback. Or maybe sometimes in a given role, you never receive

feedback, and yet feedback is incredibly helpful,

provided you really are open to it. And so

it would kind of empower people to hold me

accountable to the standards that I hold

myself to. And then I guess the final thing that it

enabled me to do is it enabled me to, in a setting where

it was outside of the context of a problem or

frustration from someone, it enabled me to explain my

working reality, what it's like to actually be a

principal investigator in modern science, which is not something that

people who are earlier in their career within my group will have

experience. And so it's kind of difficult for them to understand certain

aspects of my own behavior, which stems from

what it is like to actually be a modern principle

investigator. That's really interesting. Just sort of that

sense of transparency, I suppose, in terms of

your own expectations and expectations of the

colleagues in the lab. Yeah. And I think oftentimes with

transparency, I think there's sometimes

a bit of a fear from people who are leading groups

that transparency is somehow going to undermine them.

If there are aspects of what it's like to be a PI

that you think people won't necessarily like to

hear. So, for example, the fact that sometimes I am going to take long to

answer an email or I am going to take

longer to return a paper to people than I would like

to do. But I think because it's the reality, just being

open and transparent about why those things happen and how it is that people

can help me to do my job better, I think I found that to be

a really powerful thing. For example, not sending really long emails, I

struggle to get through them, read them, and respond to them. Even just

explaining some of that has helped people to get more out of

me and when they need it, because they understand how we

can communicate and work effectively together. No, that's really great. I'm going to come

to you in a moment, Maddie... I was going to hop on that point.

So Karla is my line manager and has been for the past three

years. And this is a really valuable aspect

of the lab handbook, I think, because what happened when I joined

is that I didn't know that. I didn't know that actually

emailing, you know, because that's, that's how you expect

to converse with people if you're not seeing them in

person. And I would send lots of emails. I would send

lots of long emails. And it got to a point where Karla had

to be like, right, listen,

let's have a conversation. You may not like it. And, you know, I'm, I'm

robust. And I was like, oh, right, okay, cool. You're not criticizing me. You're just

clarifying, um, your expectations. But that's probably

a conversation she's had to have 30 times, you know, and

now it's written down now she doesn't have to

wait until a crisis point until someone new joins and

annoys her so much that she has to take them aside and

say, please stop. But, yeah, yeah, no, that's

great. And just to follow on with you, Maddie. So

perhaps tell us a little bit about how the handbook relates to

your role. Not, you know, in that particular context of personal experience,

but, you know, in terms of your role now as EDI officer, I think, is

your role? Yes. It's sort of transitioning

to something slightly different, but I don't know what my new title will be.

So part of my role has been to take some of the

initiatives that the WIN has created, and the lab handbook is one of

them, to basically disseminate it

across the division, across the university.

There's definitely more

of a fit towards the medical sciences and the physical

sciences, and maybe it would need further adaptation to be a great fit

for, you know, the social sciences or humanities. But currently I'm

working on disseminating it across the division, and

there's lots of interest. You know, it's so

amazing to work in a place where you can create something amazing and then just

sort of share it, and people are, there's such an appetite for it. So

that's part of my role, but it also fits

really neatly within the inclusive leadership program that we've been

piloting. So in the first year, we were

able to help participants pursue a

project, and basically that was, you know, a project

related to any diversity and inclusion goal

that they had locally. But the lab handbook was something we offered

alongside that, which was a sort of IKEA flat pack,

ready to go project. And actually, I would say at least

half of the people on the, on the program took it up because they could

see the value in it, and they were all senior

PIs. And again, this year, when we've been piloting it,

yeah, people, people have had things come up, and

every time people go, oh, well, you know, I've got this problem in this

area, or I don't know how to talk about this. It just seems like

such a useful vehicle for handling or

bringing up an issue in a, in a sensitive way that isn't,

you know, overpowering, really. And what's the history of the initiative? How

long has it been sort of active? And it's a living

document, I think, perhaps come on to what that exactly means. But when was, was

it actually written and sort of rolled out? I'm trying to

remember what year we actually began. It was

2021, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, was it? I thought it was

pre pandemic. I think it started, perhaps it

was late 2020, but then I think we returned to it in the beginning of

2021, after we had the pause for a bit due to

the start of the pandemic. Yeah, so it began.

And if you go to the resources that we have, which hopefully we can include

a link to. Yeah, I'll put any links I can put in the show notes.

Yeah. So there was a Twitter thread that

where. And I can't remember who it was, but they did a brilliant

job of going through similar documents, sort of these ethos or

culture documents for research groups in STEM,

and they read a number of these and they distilled

it down to a series of topics that one might want to cover.

And I read that thread and I thought, this is brilliant. This is what I

need. Because it came at a point where I could tell that

my responsibilities were increasing, my group was growing,

and I was really starting to realize that I

was dropping balls with respect to people in my group in terms of communication

and expectations and all of that. And so at that point,

I just said to this broader research group, which is, it's not

just all under me, it's an amalgamation of. I think there's now about seven of

us PIs in one large group. And I just, at a group meeting, I just

said, why don't we try to do this? And anybody who's interested, let's

just have a series of sessions where we sit down and we try to write

this thing, and we use this Twitter thread as a guide to what we might

put in it. And then we just, as a group, we wrote it. So I

think a really important point is, with lab handbooks, all of us,

our overwhelming experience is, this is not something that a PI writes on behalf of

their group. It's something that you co create together. And there's a number of

reasons why that's important. It achieves buy in.

It ensures that when you write

it, you create something that everyone agrees that they're happy to

sign up to. And also, critically, really, really importantly,

as a PI, one of the things that comes out of

it is, I learned a very valuable lesson. You

find out about things that you have been trying to communicate, but which you have

been miscommunicating. So I'll give you the example that came up for me.

I've always been very keen that people have good work life balance. I don't think

it's healthy for people to work excessive hours and so what I

would tell people is, I don't care how many hours

you work, I just want you to be productive. Now, about half of my

group, it turns out when I said that was hearing, I want you to

have work life balance, and I want you to find the flexibility of working in

a way that works for you. But maybe as much as

half of them heard, I don't care how many hours you have to work,

you work until you produce, which is exactly the opposite message from what I was

trying to communicate. And if I had sat down and written this handbook

myself, I would have written what I've been saying for years. But

what came out was, I can tell from Karla that you're trying

to encourage work life balance, but that is not how I interpret this thing

that you wrote. So even the process, and this is something that Maddie often

talks about, she sometimes says, and I encourage her not to say this, but she

sometimes says, write the thing and then throw it away and write it again. Because

the process, and I do believe this, the process is by far the most

important part of it. It's useful to have the thing written down, but

creating it together, you learn an awful lot about each other, what

people want, what they need in a way that you don't. If it's a one

way communication stream. Well, and there's that issue of

collaboration again, which gives me an opportunity perhaps just to try and crowbar

in some open research, because I was just looking through before we came on

the headings, etcetera. And obviously you've got the roles and

expectations, and then you've got developing researchers

and career development. And that includes explicitly open and responsible

science. Collaborating is actually in there as well, as well as public

engagement. So I was just really interested. I mean, first

of all, I'm not that sure of the structure of the

Wellcome. I mean, do you have a library there? Do you have other

departments within that that support research, dissemination or open access

and all that kind of thing? So we, we don't have a, we

don't have a library within our department per se, but we do have something which

we refer to as the open WIN community. And the open WIN community

are actively involved in our department in making

our studies and the data which we produce from our studies as open as

possible. So the way which they're going about this

is a variety of different means. So they're thinking about, for example, you know, building

what kind of infrastructure do we need to be able to, to share the data

which we produce? This perhaps might involve producing things in house in

addition to resources which are available elsewhere,

there's also ethical considerations with respect to how

we can go about sharing data, in particular, sensitive data, which is

involved often with newer imaging studies. But

also the community is quite involved in a cultural

shift as well, trying to promote the values and importance

of open science to the researchers

within our center, which is a really imperative thing to get us to

what I would say as maximizing the most that we can get out of the

data which we produce. You know, that's good. And I'm really interested in this sort

of what we're trying to do at Leeds as well. I think this holistic approach

to research culture, of which, you know, my role in the library,

is an aspect of that, but obviously, it intersects with so many other aspects of

that. I don't know if Maddie or Karla have any other thoughts on

how it relates to other parts of the organization

or. When you're talking about collaboration,

do you mean collaboration scientifically? Do you mean just how

we work with each other? Well, I think. I suppose I mean everything around

that. I'm just really interested. I mean, I was just talking to colleagues

on campus recently, so at Leeds this week we've been having Africa

week. So that's a. It's been a big initiative with colleagues

from Africa and different organizations, etcetera. And I was just having

lunch with colleagues there and talking to a

colleague I haven't met before. We were talking about the power of collaboration and the

value of that in all sorts of ways. You know, whether it's research, culture, or

science itself, or writing a handbook. You know,

that, to me, is such an underpinning principle that

perhaps we can all be better at, and culturally, we need to

develop. Yeah. Okay, well, so I think one of the

defining features of WIN

is exactly collaboration. So I think one of the

most....WIN is one of

the....It's one of the world leading centers in this field

of neuroimaging, where we're specifically talking

about, in particular, the kinds of imaging that you would be able to perform in

humans. So, MRI and MEG, as Ben mentioned, um,

one of the things that has really set this center apart from other

similar places, um, uh, is

the, not just that collaboration is valued, but the

interdisciplinarity of the center is valued. So oftentimes

in, um, in imaging centers, what ends up emerging is a kind

of hierarchy, scientifically. So oftentimes what ends up

happening is, is that you have, um, a higher value

placed, for example, oftentimes in clinical departments, there's a

perception that the clinical end, as opposed to the methodological

end, is sort of the real science. And

where people are working on methodology, that's sort of a second

class citizen. And this sort of thing plays itself out

in many aspects of interdisciplinary research

across many, many, many disciplines. But one of the things that's most remarkable, I

think, about, WIN, is that from the outset, there was this ethos

that all of this science is really valuable, and that actually, we do the best

science when we genuinely approach it collaboratively.

And so, as an engineer in a clinical neurosciences

department, I'm not. We

do have a lot of engineers and physicists, and that makes a huge difference

to creating critical mass

so that we can do really cutting edge methodological work. But we're

also rubbing elbows every day with the people who have the

problems. And so we actually understand the problems, and we get to

see our methods being used in real

world, what we would refer to as applications of the

methodological research in real world

neuroscience problems. And that is hugely valuable. And I think

the fact that neither of these things is seen as being of higher

importance. It's the synergy between the two that

is what makes us such

able to achieve really impactful work in that

space. So, really, it's all about collaboration. But collaboration only

works when everybody really, truly values

the breadth of expertise and

backgrounds that we have in the

center. And a different version of that that isn't

interdisciplinary is the breadth of backgrounds that people bring

personally... ...they may have been trained in different countries, they have different life experiences,

and all of that, if you have a supportive atmosphere, if people

feel like they can really bring that into the science that they're doing, all

of that makes our science better, but only, only if you're able

to create an environment where everyone, if they

may be coming at it from a slightly different perspective,

if everyone feels like they have something to contribute.

Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Thank you. I suppose. I was thinking about

that...I read your paper, obviously, why every lab leads a handbook. That, again,

I'll link in the show notes, and there's an example you

mentioned in there where I'll just quote, actually, "an experienced technician

is frustrated because they were not included as an author on a paper to

which they feel they made a substantial contribution". So I'm guessing you're familiar

with the CRediT taxonomy, which is

a bit of a library thing. So that's exactly one of the things that we're

trying to promote here, at least for example, to ensure that, well,

people like myself, for example, in terms of the data management work that I do

are credited on a paper or a technician or whatever. So that's,

again, an area where it sort of intersects with the

open agenda more generally. Absolutely. And I think

there's so many different people who bring expertise into the studies that we

do, and yet we still have this kind of

archaic way of, of indicating who

has done what, which is in this massively

constraining thing of what order are you listed on a

piece of paper? And, I mean, it's obviously not even a piece of paper anymore.

Right. So, yeah, so we're very keen on that. In our space, for

example, there are people called radiographers. So they are the

people who actually run the scanners. So they would be the equivalent of

a wet lab technician. And often they might have a

huge influence on how good the data quality is setting up the study,

etcetera. And yet very rarely are they actually included.

And so having a way of indicating their

contribution, we feel is enormously helpful and it clearly makes a massive

difference to them. Yeah, yeah, no, that's great. Thank you.

Just a little conscious of time. But I just want to raise,

just ask you, Ben, really, if you have any insight on this, because this, I

suppose just from a personal perspective as well. I'm just interested in how

a handbook such as this can help with personal challenges. I

mean, for example, I'm quite open now, again, being a little bit older and

longer than the tooth and comfortable in my own skin of mental health problems

I've had in the past and anxiety or whatever. And that's something,

again, that's explicitly mentioned. So I think that's an important area of transparency,

again, that perhaps enables people to engage with these issues on their

own terms? Perhaps, yeah, I mean, I think a lab handbook

is a really fantastic document to help support people with respect to

their mental health and wellbeing. There's probably a

few...there's a few kind of different ways that it can achieve that.

So one of the things which I think is that by having a document where

you explicitly describe your commitment to the wellbeing of

individuals within a group and describing how you're going about doing that,

you're going to encourage people within the group to feel

empowered to have conversations with their principal investigator

or their group, lead on how things within their personal lives, such as,

say, child care responsibilities, care responsibilities, or perhaps personal

disability, interact with their work

responsibilities. Now, by having these kind of things written out explicitly

in a lab handbook document, you can begin to open up those conversations

between different members of the group to try to identify

places where perhaps adjustments can be made in terms of how they work to

promote healthy work life balance, and by virtue of that,

promote their wellbeing. Another thought, and this kind of links back to

what Karla was saying a bit earlier with respect to working

hours. So one of the things which is often quite challenging in terms

of defining how people work within research settings is

working hours. And by being really explicit about

working hours within a document such as the lab handbook, and really communicating in a

clear way what your expectations are, you can prevent people

arriving to the group with their own interpretation of how they believe

that they're supposed to work. ...and that can often arise from...that could arise from,

for example, stereotyped expectations of what it means to perhaps be a

researcher within a research setting. Or alternatively, it could be that they've

perhaps worked in a previous lab environment where it's been, where the culture has

been perhaps a bit more negative, and there's been an expectation of working long hours

and presenteeism. So by writing those things down, I think you can prevent

challenges such as burnout from arising. People know from day one how

they can be expected to work with respect to hours, and preventing things such

as burnout will be enormously helpful with respect

to mental health and personal wellbeing. If you

talk in your lab handbook about inclusivity, and you talk about how you

promote yourself as an inclusive lab and give examples of that,

you'll make people feel empowered to bring their whole

selves to work. If that's something which they want to do, which I think can

also be really important for people in their individual

personal lives. You can also just provide general

information to just signpost people through resources that perhaps

might not be available within the actual... ...within the

actual group itself. So I, for example, I am not an expert on mental

health and wellbeing, but I certainly know that there are resources, perhaps at a departmental,

university level, or perhaps even externally, which can

be...which people in our center, in

our group, can have access to, which perhaps can help them navigate their personal lives

if perhaps they don't necessarily want to have these conversations with their colleagues

surrounding them, and want to speak to people who have more professional insights.

The other thing, though, which I say is probably even more

critical with all of this, is that everything which I've said so far more relates

to people who perhaps want to have support with respect to their own mental

health and well being. But something else is also actually speaking to people

who don't necessarily consider these things a challenge for themselves. And

I think what you're really doing with the lab handbook is by talking about topics

such as well being, mental health and inclusivity,

you're communicating with people that may not necessarily be directly

impacted by these challenges and giving them information and insights in terms

of how they can support their colleagues who may be having challenges within

this space. And there are really simple ways that you can do this. You know,

you can think about just respecting the preferences or the needs of others within

the group, and doing that in a natural way,

which doesn't necessarily require people to have to have conversations to

justify why they want things to be done in a certain way, which can be

often quite difficult to do. And I think just by making these things really transparent

and clear, it will benefit. It really benefits

people. Everybody within the group. Yeah, we'll come back to that transparency

issue. So Ben mentioned the value

in signposting to resources. One of the things that I would encourage people to do

is to take advantage of your

institution's administrative teams that can help you with it.

You can't suddenly become an expert on mental health or

necessarily understand how best to

help people when things become really challenging. But we

engaged our HR team and some of the people who had expertise in mental

health in order to make sure that we got those sections right, and we found

them to be incredibly willing to help us on those sections.

So it may sound a bit daunting to people, the idea that you have to

write about some of these issues, but there are people, there will be people at

your institution who would be delighted to help you do it, I'm sure.

Yeah. And when we've been trying to introduce these

initially to a department and then sort of cascading it throughout the department,

it's been quite helpful to raise that point for

people to not have to continually search for those

resources again and again, but to have the admin teams be part of the

process so that you can, you know, where those

sort of central signposting things are, and you can have that.

You can share it more easily. That's great. And again, it all

comes back to transparency for me. I think. I think that's what I'm really hearing,

that sort of transparent approach in all sorts of aspects. But

I suppose just a question for all of you, really, in terms

of future plans and where can people find out more?

So there's kind of two aspects, I think, with respect to our future directions, with

respect to our own lab handbook within the WIN physics

group that we've created, and speaking to other people in terms of how they've

utilized the lab handbook within their group. The general idea

is that people will be returning to this document periodically to

update it, have a discussion as a group, and see where improvements and changes can

be made more broadly. With respect to our initiative,

we're very keen to promote the use of lab handbooks more generally

to a wider audience than just within our.

Just within our lab or just within our...our

center. And so we've been...our initiative, which we've

been really promoting over the past few years, is

really trying to push the idea of lab handbooks to other, other

departments, both within and also outside

of Oxford, and try to get more, a larger fraction of the research community

really engaged with what we believe is a really powerful tool

to improve positive research culture.

So what we're currently doing in terms of future directions is

just continuing to engage with those different departments, both within and outside

of Oxford, to not only promote the initiative, but also seeing where we

can provide some resources and some

support from our side in order to be able to do this, to make this

something which has a more broader impact on

higher education and research settings in

general. We published a feature article on this.

We published an article on this last year, and

essentially, so the article, anyone can find it by searching

lab handbooks elife or I'll make sure it's linked.

I'll make sure it's linked in the show notes as well, but, yeah, Sounds perfect.

And within this. Within

this document, within this article, we basically describe what a lab handbook is,

why they're beneficial, how to go about writing one, and we also

provide a series of different resources to help labs build their own. So

anybody who's interested in finding it more can look into that and they can

get access to those resources and gain a bit of another insight into

why this is such a valuable document to have. That's brilliant. Thanks very much.

Anything to add from Maddie or Karla? Yeah, I was just going to add

that in the short term,

I'm really hoping to capitalize on the interest from professional services

teams because they are

part of the culture of our departments, but may not see

themselves within lab handbook specifically. But it's a really

flexible tool and, you know, the bones of it will apply

to any team. So, actually,

my short term plans are to work with the teams within the medical

sciences divisional office, of which there are many, you

know, finance, comms, HR, all of these kinds of

teams, and just kind of look at how we can adapt

the resources that we have to be able to fit into a more professional

services style team. Yeah, well, I'd be really

interested in that because obviously interested in how I

might relate to the teams and that I'm in

a big academic library. I think there's well over 200 people in our library and

even in my local team there's 25 people. So again, we have

obviously similar challenges in that sort of team. So now that's great. Thank you very

much. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for coming on to the

podcast and just say

goodbye to you all and if you want, say goodbye as well. Thank you. Thanks

very much. Thank you. Bye. Thank you.

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