In today's episode, Taryn Bell talks to Dr Mat Tata, Research Programme Manager (EDI in Research) at Cancer Research UK. Mat leads CRUK's work on equality, diversity and inclusion in research, and offers us an insight into research culture from the funder's perspective.

Key highlights:

1️⃣Understanding the grant review process - Mat discusses how decisions are made across CRUK's funding calls, and the steps CRUK has taken to ensure their funding process is transparent, proportional and equitable.

2️⃣Funders as a mechanism for healthier research cultures - Taryn and Mat discuss the role of funders like CRUK in encouraging good behaviour while managing more serious issues of research misconduct.

3️⃣Cancer Research UK's role in supporting researchers and the public - Mat discusses how CRUK is different from other funders, and shares some of their recent work improving science literacy across the UK.

Want to know more about Cancer Research UK, or about the resources mentioned in this episode?

1. CRUK's EDI in Research Strategic Approach
2. CRUK's Policy on dignity at work in research
3. CRUK's Research integrity guidelines
4. CRUK's Research in Cancers of Unmet Need
5. CRUK's Narrative CV guidance
6. 'Research careers – changing the narrative for CVs' (written by Mat)
7. PEP-CV - the narrative CV mentorship platform

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

1. Research Impact with Ged Hall (follow Ged on Bluesky and LinkedIn)
2. Research Impact Heroes with Ged Hall
3. Open Research with Nick Sheppard (follow Nick on Bluesky and LinkedIn)
4. Research Careers with Ruth Winden (follow Ruth on Bluesky and LinkedIn)
5. Research talent management
6. Meet the Research Culturositists with Emma Spary (follow Emma on Bluesky and LinkedIn)
7. Research co-production
8. Research evaluation
9. Research leadership
10. Research professionals
11. 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 want it to be.

Welcome to the Research Culture Uncovered podcast.

I'm your host, Taryn Bell. When we talk about research culture on this podcast, we often talk about it from the perspectives of either individuals or institutions. So kind of the day-to-day stuff going on inside universities and research institutes. However, this ignores a major driver in research culture today, research funders.

If we're being really blunt, for many people, I think there's an assumption that widespread structural change won't happen unless it's driven by those who fund research. And with that in mind, I'm here today with Dr. Mat Tata from Cancer Research UK to talk about research culture from the funder perspective.

Mat previously undertook a PhD at University College London before working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. He then became involved in different research advocacy groups and initiatives before working for Vitae, a non-profit specializing in research development and research culture.

In 2023, Mat left Vitae to start working at Cancer Research UK or what we often refer to as CRUK. Mat leads their equality, diversity and inclusion, or EDI in research strategy, which covers how they support a fair and diverse research system, as well as efforts to tackle cancer inequalities through high quality and more inclusive research.

So welcome to the podcast, Mat.

Thanks Taryn. It's great to be here.

I've given a little bit of an introduction to you there, but could you tell me a little bit more about your role at CRUK?

Sure. So when I first started off at CRUK, I was initially working in our funding policy and governance team. And in short, this is basically how we use funding to incentivize and in many cases require positive behaviours from researchers that, you know, elicit impactful research, research with integrity and obviously positive research culture. And that crosses over into kind of the EDI space. You know, it affects kind of who we are funding, making sure that we promote a diversity of researchers, um, and then. In the process of refreshing our EDI and research strategy, a role became available to actually lead on that.

And I think because of that experience working with funding and all the kind of levers and bells and whistles that that entails, I felt like it was a good move and actually linked up a lot with what motivated me as a researcher myself that sometimes saw the system wasn't working as well as it should do, and so that's how I got looped into a lot of the EDI work that we do.

What does a working day look like for you at CRUK? What kind of work are you doing?

So we have an unbelievably broad range of ways of supporting research, which I'm very happy to talk through at length. And actually it then speaks to the different concerns that we need to be mindful of when it comes to research culture.

But a lot of it is actually tying together the work that different teams are doing. So for example, we have a clinical trial unit network that has an EDI working group. So it might be that I sit in on that group, hear some of the different ways they're trying to coordinate work together, um, and then try and feed that into other ways of working. We have core funded centers and institutes that also work on, you know, trying to address cancer inequalities and making sure that they're all joined up. And it, whilst it might sound a little banal, actually, by linking them together, we're more likely to see collective improvement across the sector, such that we don't have patches of research that are doing well and others not.

Other than that, there's obviously, um, a fair degree of consultation that has to happen. I think we don't sort of pop our finger in the sky and decide what to do next. A lot of the changes that we make to the way that we fund research, the way that we devise research strategies is based entirely on what we hear from researchers, and that's probably very similar to the sort of work that colleagues and listeners and research culture and researcher development offices do themselves, so that it's sort of an evidence-based action.

And I think also to some degree, there's a certain amount of communication work involves in my role as well. I mean, coming on a podcast like this is, is a good opportunity, but equally it might be about going to sector fora between other research funders or indeed in kind of more niche research areas to go there and to try and promote efforts amongst other stakeholders towards what we're trying to do.

And often that then informs me on what's working. And maybe then we might devise new research funding opportunities off the back of that.

This might be a difficult question to answer because you know, everyone's different, every institution is different, but as a whole, how has this work been received by the broader research community?

Well, very positively. I think that the vast majority of people, I use the word people, not researchers, vast majority of people want to be included and to belong within whatever kind of world or niche that they think they inhabit. So, um, it's generally well supported despite the sad, kind of geopolitical context that surrounds things like EDI and even research culture.

So it is generally very well received. There are instances of where we'll get support from senior stakeholders, and actually it's been positive to see that we might normally criticize certain members of the research community for being dinosaurs, that's not necessarily the case, but what we might see is an agreement at our strategic ambition.

But then when we start to put that into practice, when we start to suggest interventions or ways that we might actually force through culture change, then you may start to see a little bit more, um, intrepidation. Um, sometimes, you know, there's a concern about overreach and the sad reality is that culture change is slow.

I had a colleague once tell me that a big boat takes a long time to turn, and it wasn't something I wanted to hear. Um, but it stands true.

So Cancer Research UK has a very specific remit in terms of the research, obviously, but apart from that, what sets CRUK apart from other funders in their general approach to research?

So I'm, I'm very glad you've asked this question because there is a real propensity to band many funders together as one and the same in terms of their approach to research. And I, I think I was possibly guilty of this as a researcher myself. Um, we're obviously a medical research charity, but that means a specific accountability to people affected by cancer.

After all, you know, our revenue comes from members of the public through donations, legacies, charity shops we're known for. That's alongside things like philanthropy, commercial partnerships, and royalties. And people affected by cancer is a lot of people, the audiences are very diverse, their patients, relatives, and close ones, people at risk of developing cancer, so if you've got the mutation that maybe predisposes you to that. And then of course all the supporter base that might include, you know, people donating money, volunteers, and so on. We also work with a lot of different stakeholders, and that includes researchers and clinicians, but also people in government, people, you know, civil service, NHS, large businesses, for example, biomedical enterprises. So there's a lot of kind of business development that goes on where we try and take research that we've funded to be escalated into things like, well, to be commercialized so that um, we can actually start to see that research have impact in the clinic.

Um, and I think something that is really caused the way we work, um, that I didn't necessarily know from the outside was the degree to which we include the voice of people affected by cancer. It's a really significant part of the way that we work. There are research proposals, funding applications we would've received that have lacked that attention to incorporating the voice of, um, people affected by cancer that you don't see co-creation, that you don't see that kind of constant and meaningful embedding of patient and public involvement as it's called that then just doesn't get funded in the end. So it's positive to see that that now isn't just a platitude, but actually is realistically part of the way we work. And actually it's part of the way we assess funding.

So that takes me on quite nicely actually, to talking about that kind of funding review process because I think for many researchers and researcher developers, actually, it's really hard for us to know what's going on behind the scenes. We often work with researchers applying for funding or work with researchers working on funded research. We don't see what goes on behind the scenes at the funders though, so could you tell us a little bit more about how that funding review process works at CRUK?

Sure. I can give you some of the nuts and bolts because again, I found it very illuminating when I first joined, to then understanding how grant funding can influence and also be influenced by, uh, research culture. So we operate a two tier funding process. What that means is after a initial check by our grants team for technical issues, applications will go first to an expert review panel where there'll be two members nominated to kind of be speakers for that application, um, that will be doing the more detailed review. Uh, and we usually have about two to three panels across each committee. So there's quite a lot of organisation that has to go on. We have five committees. Those speakers review the proposal in great detail, but then they lead a discussion with the rest of the panel who have all read it, but obviously aren't necessarily taking that kind of prominent role in presenting it.

And then the panel will collectively give it a scientific quality score. And if it's a larger grant, applications will also often involve an interview for the lead applicant or applicants. And sometimes there'll be additional input, um, being sought as written comments from scientific experts outside the panel.

So if there's something missing in knowledge or perspective, then we do make an effort to plug that gap. Those scores are then passed to funding committees who ratify the decisions and are able to provide further context, expertise, that maybe the panel didn't have, and also a bit of strategic direction on top of the fact that we're here to support high quality research.

We do also have a number of overlying strategies, and I think that's perhaps worth bearing in mind when it comes to, again, comparing us to other funders. A good example is our Cancers of Unmet Need strategy. The idea is that there are certain cancers with an unmet clinical burden. These are cancers that despite big improvements for other tumour types over the last four decades, still have five year survival rates below 25%.

So we particularly encourage funding applications studying these, and the idea is that when they're being assessed at committee, strong applications looking at a cancer of unmet need are prioritized. Um, we're also a member of the AMRC, the Association of Medical Research Charities that actually have principles of peer review.

By being a member of the AMRC, you have to follow a number of expectations that are very valuable in instilling robustness in the review process, but still lend themselves to creating operational challenges that I'm fortunate some of my colleagues are very apt at dealing with. So the first is ensuring that review processes are proportional to the scale of the grant being applied for.

Second, that, um, decision makers are independent. Third, that those decision makers. Are diverse on a professional and personal grounds. Four, that we rotate those assessors and five that impartiality is upheld at all costs. So for that idea about proportional to the scale of the grant for those larger awards, um, which take a long lot more time to prepare, they're applied for in two phases. It's, you know, the classic kind of outline, um, application for our programs and career fellowships before we then invite a select number to submit a full proposal in terms of a diversity of peer review or expert review as we call them. It's a pretty complex system who sits on our panels and then on funding committees because they've got, uh, you know, grants management team have to balance things like the gender, ethnicity, host institution of potential assessors within their scientific expertise. Um, qualities like working as a clinician, as a doctor, experience of industry, whether they're a data science expert, and then that point about a host institution is very important as if we have, um, many panelists or committee members from a single institution, there's a greater chance of having conflicts of interest.

Um, and it's the process is that those who are conflicted have to sit out the discussion in a separate room and that's fine up until a point, but you don't really want half the room getting up to leave, um, when you receive an application that they all happen to be at the university for.

So it's actually like a really complicated process.

And it sounds like a lot of work has to go on in the background just to get to the point where you can actually review these applications.

Yeah, absolutely. And so the, the expert reviewer sort of invitation process is fraught with challenges. And actually on that point about sort of diversity of personal background, I think one of the challenges that we've seen is we are finding that it's increasingly difficult to have invitations accepted from potential reviewers from minoritized backgrounds. So it's not from lack of trying that we struggle to recruit these individuals. It's that often, as I'm sure many understand, that for many of these individuals that have progressed against sort of structural challenges and, in many cases, discrimination, they already have a lot on their plate, often at their institution or in their field. And to add to that, an invitation to be an expert reviewer, you know, many want to take up the opportunity but recognize it as a time, you know, concern. So it's, it is very difficult and there's a lot of invitations that go out and sadly, a, a vanishingly small number, um, that come back accepted. Um, and that's, as I said, you know, on top of the fact that we really need to have scientific expertise in the room to relate to a different tumour type or the area of biology being studied or whatever it happens to be.

Mm-hmm. I don't get the impression that that's unique to CRUK, many of those issues though, because I know with other funders, they also struggle with those issues of trying to get enough reviewers.

And then there also is, as you've highlighted, that issue of the burden of review falling on some people more heavily than others, so there is so much to think about in there. What I'd like to do though, is I'd like to go back to something you talked about earlier in the review process when you were talking about the fact that actually much of the way the applications are reviewed is about scientific quality.

But what about the stuff besides scientific quality? Or actually we could argue it's a part of scientific quality, just not as directly as people expect. Things like research culture. So I guess my question to you is, does CRUK really care about research culture? Does it actually make a difference to a grant or to your approach to funding?

Or is it just a, a tick box exercise?

So, yeah, it's, I guess it's the, the question you're kind of pivoting back to the, in your, from your introduction really about the perceived role of research funders in stimulating. Positive research culture and you're not wrong. And certainly for CRUK I can't overstate the importance to our core mission.

We are constantly looking at new ways to enhance research culture, especially learning from others on what works. And whilst I expressed earlier that no two funders are identical, on the flip side, we always stand to benefit from following each other's work. And I mentioned that we're part of a research funders policy group is one example of how we crib from one another. So we can and do incorporate research culture into research assessment, both for individuals and grants. So for example, our careers committee employs a so-called competency framework. Maybe don't be fooled by the wording there, and it's divided by seniority so that we look at different qualities or competencies by kind of roughly where you might be in your career trajectory.

So we don't end up having junior and senior candidates applying for the same fellowships that they're being assessed, you know, to scale with where they've got to. So within that framework, there are a number of research cultural relevant criteria. We'd expect those aiming, for example, to set up their own groups, to have already evidenced personal leadership by developing others as well as, for example, building their engagement skills.

I think that fits very well with this key aim of ensuring a sort of patient centered research, that patient and public involvement is always present in the mind of research as we fund. And of course also that they're sharing their research with a breadth of audiences. Indeed, also, you know, within the, the research community.

So it's very much there. And that's been part of, uh, at least for the careers committee, a skills and experience form, which actually we've had for, um, a number of years long before the introduction of the Narrative CV, which of course we can likely talk about today. Um, that's for the careers committee, for other areas of funding.

Our guide for assessing grant applications, which we have online, has illustrative examples of how proposals again might be meeting, um, assessment criteria such as, you know, evidence of practicing open science, what you know, people management looks like, and how that, you know, fits together with actually achieving.

On the scientific rationale in the proposal. Um, and there are, you know, many other activities inherent within that, those criteria that you might find within, uh, the UKRI research culture framework, for example.

I guess then that there's lots of opportunities for researchers to show that they've got the capability to do these things, to show that they're thinking about how they work with other people.

But what about the flip side? When we see bad behaviour on the part of researchers? Do funders take a stance on bullying and harassment? Or is there a way for funders like yourselves to stop funding researchers who engage in misconduct or in breaches of research integrity who are doing the opposite of, of what we want to see?

Again, uh, it's a very reasonable question to ask. I think, you know, again, as a researcher, I've often found as many others looking for a higher force that could act in a kind of police or judiciary style manner, and actually the sort of access to funding being seemingly obvious lever to do that. So. I should say from the get go that we take the indiscretions of bullying, harassment, research misconduct very seriously.

For one, it's proving harder to recruit students and postdocs often due to things like salaries and geopolitics, but. Also, the last thing we want to do is make research even less desirable by having a toxic culture prevailing and making it a less attractive place to come and work. Um, but perhaps most importantly, the bullying, harassment, misconduct, they all erode the quality, integrity of research, which is going to harm our mission to beat cancer for everyone.

I think it's really important that we have this positive attitude and also I guess, honesty amongst researchers, because at the end of the day, if poor quality of research on the back of poor personal behaviours is allowed to persist, it will ultimately result in less impact for patients and people affected by cancer.

So I can start, first of all, with our Dignity at Work and research integrity policies, um, we're also a signatory to the Research Integrity Concordat and an active contributor to the Funders Forum behind that. So the Dignity at Work policy covers bullying and harassment, and it lays out our expectations for people involved in the research we fund.

There are organisations the need to notify us of any allegations upheld against people either applying for or ultimately holding our funding, and then also sanctions that we may apply. The research integrity policy outlines expectations for roughly the same people, places, allegations, albeit about enabling good research conduct.

And both of those policies offer avenues for confidential whistle blowing, but we'd always encourage those raising concerns to report them via the employing organisation. And that is just because it's very hard for research funders to handle cases individually. We don't have access to the evidence institutions carry about instances of bullying, harassment, misconduct, especially as researchers are not our employees. So instead what we do is we report mandating on allegations linked to those applicants and award holders compile data on that investigations upheld allegations such that it's not appropriate or effective for us to investigate the allegations ourselves, but we can and do examine where the proper process was followed by those organisations and for any investigations and allegations upheld, we have acted by sanctioning those accused, for example, of bullying. We've, you know, had instances of, you know, making those in individuals ineligible to apply for funding for a set period, and we've often seen as well on the basis of things we've done efforts by those institutions to also ensure that those poor behaviours, those sort of misdeeds, are not acted out further. Um, examples include, you know, um, limiting how much people management someone accused might be able to do in, in the future.

But again, this is something that I, I wanted to draw out actually when you asked me this question about sort of promoting a good research culture in general. It's arguably better to be leading people towards better behaviours before the issue arises. It's inclusive leadership, transparency, honesty, kindness, rather than, you know, putting all our eggs in one basket of kinda creating mechanisms for punishment.

So we actually have four core funded institutes, Scotland, Manchester, Cambridge, and also the Francis Crick Institute, where we have in almost all research integrity advisors that actually, um, you know, many universities in the UK and further afield have themselves. They're very well embedded and the idea is that they're there to help solve issues between people or in research conduct early before they become more problematic. And I guess also the connection that we have that there are at our core funded institutes, what happens is that they feed back to us repeating or sort of repeating instances or trends that, um, they then may uh, represent somewhere that we should be acting. Um, in addition, they're also really invested in research culture.

We've got, um, at least two of them leading work under the UKRI metascience call, um, you know, around kind of new ways of conducting research and having good research practice. Um, so yeah, I think a lot of it stems from what we can do. In working life as opposed to just at the point of applications, because it's rare that individuals put in their application, um, something bad they've done.

So we're not necessarily going to catch, um, poor behaviours, which means that it's not necessarily the best tool available, but. It's not something that we would neglect and clearly, um, when allegations are raised, we need to act.

And to just go back to something that you briefly touched on earlier, I do wonder if this is one of the areas in which the Narrative CV can be quite useful.

I mean, and, and you'll know something about this because you used to work on some of the Narrative CV work at CRUK yourself. There's been a lot of research or the startings of research anyway into how Narrative CVs work and how they're having an effect at the funding process. But I also wonder if part of the impact of them is sending out a message to the research community and to people within universities and, and higher education institutions that this is the kind of researcher that we are looking for now, this is the kind of person that we are looking to do research. Someone who is a bit more community oriented, who's not just thinking about the research, they're thinking about the environment in which research happens. But I imagine you have lots of thoughts on this given that you've worked on it for such a long time.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and obviously this is a piece of work that you and I met recently as part of one of those UKRI metascience funded proposals and what to say about Narrative CVs. I mean, it's, they're such a, it's such a, a deep and interesting area of research assessment, research culture that, um, perhaps in fact, coming back to your original question about kind of reception from the research community, Narrative CV, are those, you know, it sort of polarizing and seldom you find somebody who's deeply in love with them.

And on the flip side, quite common to find people who are vehemently opposed to them. They present a very good opportunity to frame your achievements and the diversity of what you offer to research alongside your capacity to deliver on the proposal. I think that's something that is often overlooked is that narrative there, much like the traditional list of outputs are to support the belief amongst assessors that you can deliver on the research ideas that are there in particular, that you can lead a team positively and constructively. You can have a great idea but not be able to lead, you know, your research team to deliver on that. And being a very patient-centred charity research funder, there's a lot that we hope to see within Narrative CVs that should be focused on to what degree researchers are engaging beyond their immediate environment and in particular beyond the kind of prototypical group of researchers that they might feel attached to. So a key aspect as well, when assessors are looking at a scientific quality score is to what extent the applicant or applicants. Collaborating and creating a network that will allow them to tackle some of the thornier questions that are being posed.

Um, and it's, it's often the case that you get a glittering proposal, which is filled with lots of promise, the network of collaborators isn't deep enough to buffer some of the likely challenges that will come, or sometimes it's about kind of getting access to patient samples or patient cohorts, models and so on.

And that degree of meaningful collaboration is really critical to sort of de-risking whether the application will actually achieve the, the promise it sets out to. So that means that when, as part of the, you know, sort of guidelines for assessing, grants assessors really are looking for evidence that applicants have basically gone out of their way to create paritable and, uh, effective working relationships with people.

And that's something the Narrative CV is good for capturing.

Absolutely. And that's why I quite like the way that UKRI, tends to refer to it as the 'applicant capability to deliver', because I think that actually makes, that as a kind of framing is much clearer than calling it a Narrative CV, I think. I think, because essentially that's what we're, that's what we're trying to acknowledge is that to do good research requires more than just the, the technical skills. There's so much more around it than just that.

Absolutely. Um, and it's, it, it's interesting that, you know, Narrative CVs, again, being controversial as they are, they've kind of challenged a little bit the idea of whether we are looking for track record per se or more, as you said, the potential to deliver, and obviously there is a bit of a conflation between the two, and obviously sometimes you do need to look at a record of where people have been to guess where they will go next, but equally, sometimes things aren't as easily summarized, particularly if someone's pivoting to a new research area or they've just become independent and they're trying to break out. We, we really need to pay attention to some of the kind of more subtle indications that they're capable of rising to the next level. That they're not just sort of riding on the coattails of where they developed as an early career researcher, but actually you can see their personal leadership come through.

Um, and actually not that something that we've got really comprehensive data on, but you mentioned the analysis and evaluation that I had done on Narrative CV users. It seems like the most compelling evidence of what Narrative CVs really sell the applicant and the application well, are ones where that personal leadership comes through and where you've got evidence of the individual going out of their way to do something different that then is met by, you know, some of the challenges that go behind what kind of language we expect to see. I say we, the, you know, the global north, the west, um, there's a lot of, you know, individualistic expectations placed upon researchers that we expect people to have individually led to be using the word like I or me.

So there's still always work that needs to be done with assessors and with evaluation to make sure that we're not getting. Overly hung up on the language being used, but more focusing on actually what are the ambitions and general kind of behaviours evident within a Narrative CV and using that as the measure of potential.

Absolutely. And if anybody is listening and, and is currently in the process of writing a Narrative CV, what I would really encourage you to do is register on the PEP-CV platform online. There are lots of active mentors there, including myself, who are there to help support you in writing a CV, particularly if you don't have that kind of support at your own institution as well.

And I, I, just to add to that, I would say. What's great about PEP-CV is it recognizes that something like Narrative CVs aren't going to just take the world by storm. They require community embedding and mentorship is a fantastic way to do that. Um, in particular, there's no single Narrative CV that we should be cribbing from. And equally, an individual will write multiple narratives for different proposals to meet them. So kudos to you and the other mentors for helping propel that change.

I could keep talking about Narrative CVs for ages, but we'll, we'll put a pin in that one for now. So thinking forward, what's next for your work at CRUK?

Well, my role is to lead on the equality, diversity and inclusion in research strategy or strategic approach as we refer to it. So a lot of the next five years will be spent doing just that. I mean, it's split between the kind of cancer and inequalities, inclusive research design kind of things. And then the fair funding, diverse communities of researchers, inclusive environments. So as part of that, you know, we're going to much like the discussion today, be looking at where we can see scope for improvements and you know, an evolution in the way assessment goes. I think in particular, we want to make sure that we are not unfairly discriminating, um, through the way we assess and in particular, so just how, uh, visible our funding opportunities are. And particular a big part of that in sort of bridging those gaps in diversity will be. What can we do before the application actually comes in? From the diversity data I've analyzed, it doesn't look like there are any large inequalities or imbalances and who's successful.

But what really is stark is actually who's applying to us in the first instance. Sometimes, you know, a really stark difference between men and women, and minorities, disability, and that's when we're looking at single characteristics. When you become intersectional, it's, you know, further in the wrong direction.

So how can we stimulate more and stronger applications from those underrepresented groups? And I guess this is maybe, um, a bit more of a tangent from what we discussed, but, uh, something that has really been very gratifying to see at CRUK has been the emphasis on science literacy. So obviously we want the public to have a greater understanding of what cancer is, not just so that we can hopefully gain further support from them, but also because we want people to be better at detecting symptoms and understanding research and being a part of it. So there've been a couple of things to note. The first is maybe some of your listeners, certainly in the UK might have caught a three-part documentary series on Channel 4 called Cancer Detectives that featured three of our top stellar cancer researchers describing the work they're doing.

You may need a box of tissues handy as quite a stirring set of accounts, but really impressive and very forward-looking research. But things that really hinge a lot on the public's acceptance of research. So, for example, one instance of the creation of, uh, vaccine for lung cancer and obviously all the vaccine hesitancy we've seen in recent years.

We, we obviously have a role to play in ensuring that the research we support ultimately is adopted in the clinic. So that just shows that kind of end-to-end appreciation. Um, another is that we're supporting one of the podcasts produced by Goalhanger. If people are familiar with things like The Rest is Politics or Entertainment or History, this is now, The Rest is Science with one of everyone's favorite science communicators, Professor Hannah Fry, um, and whilst there aren't overt cancer-leaning podcasts within that, what we're trying to do is ensure that some of the kind of more niche aspects of cancer biology, for example, are explained by, you know, two fantastic science communicators, and again, ensuring that the research we do ends up having impact, 'cause if we focus too much on the bench, you know, things that are happening in laboratories but not enough on their impact uptake in engagement in society, then we're only doing half of our jobs.

Brilliant. It's been absolutely lovely to talk to you about the work you're doing at CRUK, but that's all we have time for today, so thank you so much for coming on the pod.

Oh, well thank you very much for having me on the pod. It's been a pleasure and I've been a long time listener, so it's quite a treat to be, uh, this side of the headphones.

You can find more about CRUK and a few resources about Narrative CVs in the show notes as usual. So thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next time.

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