🎙️ In our latest episode of Research Culture Uncovered, host Heledd Jarosz-Griffiths explores a deceptively simple question: what actually shapes a researcher?
Drawing on reflections from a Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) series, this episode brings together voices from across global research development sessions — exploring research vision, impact, careers, culture, and identity.
🔹 Why research vision matters — and why it’s so hard to articulate
Hear insights from Dr Jim Baxter on developing long-term direction, and why the pressures of funding, publishing, and short-term goals can pull researchers away from the bigger picture.
🔹 What counts as “impact” — and who decides
Explore reflections from Ged Hall on how impact is shaped by discipline, national context, and institutional priorities — and whether researchers follow or challenge those systems.
🔹 Research culture beyond the buzzwords
Dr Marjorie Boissinot unpacks the complexity of research culture across global contexts, and why much of what shapes culture isn’t always labelled as such.
🔹 Creating space to think — even in busy, online environments
From Taryn Bell’s session, discover how meaningful reflection can happen even in large-scale virtual settings — and why researchers are more ready for these conversations than we might assume.
🔹 Visibility, identity, and showing up as a researcher
Through Ruth Winden’s work, explore how researchers navigate professional identity — balancing authenticity, visibility, and the expectations of academic and non-academic audiences.
🔹 The emotional side of research we don’t always talk about
From Heledd’s own session on rejection, this episode reflects on the shared emotional realities of research — and how creating space to acknowledge them can shift how we move forward.
💡 If you’re thinking about your own direction, identity, or place within research — this episode offers space to pause, reflect, and reconnect with what matters.
Again and again, these sessions came back to questions of direction, value, identity and context. How do researchers make sense of where they’re going? How do they communicate the value of their work? How do institutional cultures and wider systems shape that? And how do people stay connected to what matters to them, particularly in the face of uncertainty, rejection, and the realities of research careers?
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One of the strongest themes across the programme was the importance — and the difficulty — of articulating a research vision. Jim Baxter’s session focused on helping researchers start to think about what that vision might look like, not just in terms of the next task or application, but in terms of a longer-term sense of purpose and direction.
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And that felt especially important in the context of early career research, where it can be hard to look up and think long term, when the immediate pressures are so dominant.
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But conversely, the thing that might actually win you the next research grant application is that long-term vision coming through in the application, and people saying, “Yeah, if we fund this now, it’s really important and we can see where this is going” — not just by the end of the project, but into the future.
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And it tends to be those people who have got a clearer articulation of their vision on their webpage who tend to float to the top. So many pages — people’s individual staff pages or LinkedIn profiles — just talk about what they have done, not where they want to go.
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And that matters because researchers aren’t just developing their work in isolation — they’re doing it within systems that signal what is valued, what is rewarded, and what is seen as meaningful.
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So was this being driven by the disciplinary biases of the health and engineering researchers and their representation across the countries that were represented? And so this led me to wonder: are researchers dealing with the biases towards different impact types that the countries in which they work have, or the ones they wish the country had?
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So part of the challenge is helping people recognize it in practice, in the systems and initiatives around them, and in the everyday realities of how research is supported and experienced.
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Another thread running through the programme was the importance of creating space for reflection. That came through strongly in Taryn’s careers session, where she invited participants to think about their values, alternative pathways, and what meaningful career planning might look like.
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And in this respect, the WUN webinars can present a challenge because, because of the size of the audience, we literally can’t see anyone. Everyone’s cameras and mics are turned off. And so for me, this always puts me in a position where I am encouraged to be much more creative about how to engage members of the audience and how to ensure engagement without actually being able to see anyone physically.
So that means things like using the chat more, using polling software, using questions that will help people to think.
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Another dimension of this came through in the session by Ruth Winden on LinkedIn and professional visibility. While it focused on something quite practical — how researchers present themselves online — it also raised some deeper questions about identity, visibility and how researchers communicate their work beyond traditional academic spaces.
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It felt like another example of how researchers are navigating not just the work itself, but how the work is seen, understood, and connected to wider audiences.
Listening across all of these reflections, what stood out to me was that they weren’t just sessions about skills. They were sessions about how researchers make sense of themselves and their work.
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Taken together, they point to something bigger. Researchers are not only being asked to produce knowledge. They’re also being asked to explain why their work matters, to situate themselves within complex systems, and to make decisions about the kind of researcher — and perhaps the kind of person — they want to be.
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And what became really clear is that it’s not just that we experience these emotions — it’s how we’ve learned to deal with them, and that’s shaped by the cultures we’re part of. In academia, we often learn, sometimes implicitly, to move on quickly, not to dwell, to focus on the next submission, the next opportunity.
What came through really strongly in those reflections afterwards was the importance of actually pausing and acknowledging those emotional responses. That shift from pushing through to noticing and naming what we’re feeling can make a real difference to how we recover and move forward.
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And yet, when we do create space — even briefly — for reflection, for sharing, for naming those experiences, something shifts. It becomes less about “I failed” and more about “I’m learning.”
And for me, that’s where this really connects back to everything we’ve heard across the series because when we’re talking about vision, impact, careers, culture, and visibility, these aren’t just abstract ideas. They’re lived experiences, shaped by the environments we’re in, the behaviours we see around us, and what’s valued — or left unsaid.
So one of the things I’m taking away from this series is that researcher development is not just about building skills or sharing information. It’s about creating space for people to think more deeply about direction, purpose, value, and context.
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So that just leaves me to say thank you for listening, and I really hope you enjoyed hearing some of these reflections from colleagues across the series. Take care and goodbye.
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Thanks for listening — and here’s to you and your research culture.
