In our Research Culture Uncovered conversations we are asking what is Research Culture and why does it matter? In this episode Dr Emma Spary talks to Dr Karen Hinxman about her new role as the Head of the White Rose University Consortium.

Karen shares her extensive background in academia and research development, her transition to her current role, and the consortium's mission to enable people to thrive across the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield, and York.

We discuss the consortium's focus areas, including career development, fostering communities, research culture, celebrating successes, and leading impactful projects. Karen outlines various initiatives like the Equity Leadership Program, the Prosper Cohort, and the Crucible Program, all designed to support diverse, interdisciplinary collaboration and career progression.

The main messages include:

• Wanting the consortium to be people focussed and community led
• The wider remit to include professional service / research professional colleagues in the community
• How the consortium adds value, delivers practical solutions, and complements existing efforts across our institutions
• How our institutions should learn from each other and share best practice
• Ways to get in touch, find out more and access the openly available resources being created

Karen mentions several links in this episode including:

• White Rose University Consortium
• The Prosper Postdoc Careers portal
• REDS conference
• Researcher Development Concordat
• Researchers14
• Contact email info@whiterose.ac.uk

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

• Research Impact with Ged Hall (follow Ged on Twitter and LinkedIn)
• Open Research with Nick Sheppard (follow Nick on Twitter and LinkedIn)
• Research Careers with Ruth Winden (follow Ruth on Twitter and LinkedIn)
• Research talent management with Tony Bromley (follow Tony on Twitter and LinkedIn)
• Meet the Research Culturositists with Emma Spary (follow Emma on Twitter and LinkedIn)
• Research co-production
• Research Leadership
• Research Evaluation

Connect to us or leave us a review on LinkedIn: @ResearchUncoveredPodcast (new episodes are announced here)

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

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

[00:00:22] Emma: Hi, it's Emma, and for those of you who don't know me, I lead the Researcher Development and Culture team at the University of Leeds, and I'm one of the hosts on this podcast.

Today I'm joined by Dr. Karen Hinxman, and I've worked with Karen for quite a few years, And she's recently seen a change of role. So today we're going to be talking to her about her new role as the Head of the White Rose University Consortium, including what that is and what she's hoping to achieve. So welcome Karen to the podcast.

And as a way of an introduction, can you tell us a bit about your background, the role you're now in, and what interested you in this role?

So I highly recommend everyone to go there and visit it. And then came back and did three years at the University of Warwick. And I really enjoyed my research and science, but I knew I was a problem solver more so than an ideas person and finding my own niche. So I looked at ways of, where I could go next in my career, and I came across a maternity cover at Imperial College's Postdoctoral Development Centre, which was a maternity cover for a research and development role.

And I was there then for 10 years, so I went for a year and I stayed for 10. And I had a really great time there. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I started working with postdocs supporting their applications for fellowships and lectureships, developed lots of training, looked at ways that we could increase our portfolio of what we offered.

And as the years went on, I moved into a more strategic role. So I was Institutional Lead for the Researcher Development Concordat Action Plan. I was involved in lots of research culture projects, including things about retaining women in academia, identifying the needs of long term researchers, as well as commissioning a whole host of resources for our academic community.

I was in that role I was also a member and then later became chair of researchers 14, which is where I got to to meet you and work with you. And researchers 14 is a group of research developers who are for the Russell group and collectively support over 65 percent of the postdoc population in the UK.

So I had lots of experience on that strategic side and thinking about what, how we could help the sector. And then this role came up and originally when the role came up, I sent it to a friend who was living up north raving about how good an opportunity it was. It'd be amazing that she should apply.

As soon as she received that email, I got a phone call telling me not to be so silly and I should apply. So what I should tell our listeners is that although I work in Yorkshire, I actually live in Essex. So I have my family and everything is settled down here. But post COVID, the world has changed in how we work.

So the idea of potentially working in Yorkshire, So I put my name in the hat, went through the process and then got offered the role. I had to take a moment to think about how I was going to make this work, particularly with my family, but we have, and I've absolutely enjoyed it since. So the consortium has a really long history of collaboration, 27 years in fact, and they've done lots of things in that time.

So how do we encourage movement between the institutions for career progression? So fast forward a year, I'm now responsible for leading the partnership between the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York, and also delivering the consortium's overall strategy.

So what is it and what does it hope to achieve?

What's really important for me is that the consortium adds value, delivers practical solutions, and complements existing efforts across our institutions. All three institutions are doing lots in this space already, so what I want to make sure is what we do is enhancing their offer. And to do that we have five five areas that we're exploring with our partners.

So the first is careers. So we want to provide practical and tailored activities that complement existing efforts, which so enable individuals from all backgrounds to establish thriving careers at our universities, and really help them think about how they can move between the institutions for their career progression.

Our second is to think about how we can build communities and networks across our institutions to foster a sense of belonging and connection throughout the region. Our third is thinking about how we can help research culture agenda across our institutions by learning from each other and sharing best practice.

Our fourth is how do we celebrate those successes and amplify our collective voice? There's so many great examples of good work happening at the institutions. We want to showcase this work across our institutions, but also for a larger reach within the community and the sector. And finally, our last one is thinking about how we can lead projects that will have impactful change at regional and national level so that we can really see those positive drivers within our institutions across higher education.

So what have you actually got planned already? And what can we expect to see? Lots is the answer to that.

So that's York and Sheffield. And in total, there's over 150 PGR students across the three institutions who turned up for that, which was amazing. And we're looking at seeing how we can enhance that for next year. Our first cohort for our equity leadership program will be graduating in December. And the Equity Leadership Program is a pioneering cross institutional initiative aimed at fostering diversity in higher education leadership.

So it offers targeted leadership development for staff from global majority backgrounds, including those both in academia and professional services who identify as black, Asian, or other minoritized ethnicities. And it was really important for us to bring these groups together because they're all senior leaders and there's so much they can learn from each other.

We want to give them the skills to think about their next steps. So this program is really there to accelerate career progression for the students. This group of talented individuals with the ultimate goal of diversifying leadership within higher education. So that's one of the programs that we will continue to run next year.

And we've also got two other development programs. The first is our Prosper Cohort, which is aimed at our postdoc community and based on the content from the Prosper Portal that was that's been led by Liverpool. And this program is a three day in person workshops and designed for postdocs who are ready to take control of their career development.

And the idea is that we're going to empower them with the skills and knowledge to shape their future, whether it's in academia or beyond. So what's nice about this program is that we are bringing Postdocs together from the three institutions, and also it's a three day program we're hosting at each day at a different institution, so we get to showcase at that institution, so one day at Leeds, one day at Sheffield, one day at York.

And along with the workshops, we're also going to be able to bring groups together to start the think about how they can coach and support each other and each participant will also have access to and support from an experienced coach as well to think about their career decisions and how they're going to move forwards.

So we're currently recruiting for this cohort applications close in January. So come and have a look and see, there's lots of information on our website. And then our next development program is our Crucible program, which is tailored for independently funded fellows and lecturers who are within three three years of their their appointment.

We want to bring together the future research leaders across the White Rose organizations to explore career enhancements through interdisciplinary and cross institutional research leadership and collaboration, with the aim of fostering long term shifts in ethics. It's used towards interdisciplinary collaboration, knowledge exchange and creative thinking.

That's a lot to say in one line. But what's great about this is we really want to bring people together, but we're also going to back it with some seed funding. So any ideas that are generated during these three labs, so there's, there are three two day labs across across six months. Any ideas that are generated, they can also apply for seed funding.

So we can start bringing these ideas into the mainstream as well. So that's a bit about our development programs. And we're also looking at supporting networks and building networks across institutions. So these can be on a particular research theme, but we also want to think of people to think about outside the box.

So what makes sense to bring people together? It could be on a particular characteristic, could be a particular career stage. It could be on a particular problem that you think actually bringing a group of individuals across institutions together would make sense. To support this, we have the Community Fund which is something I've introduced, and this is there to help cover things such as catering costs transport costs to come to different institutions, and take away that, maybe that, any initial barriers there are to establishing these networks.

And then finally, we are developing resources. So we've already established the White Rose Community, which is a searchable online database that will connect individuals who engage with the consortium, including our training program participants and our network leads, and anyone who's engaged with the consortium.

And the great thing about this is that it covers all our three institutions, but also the different areas that people may be in, so you can find potential. new connections, new mentors, and new collaborators. We recently spoke about the Equity Leadership Program in the REDS Conference in October, and one area that we've had lots of interest in is the definitions around sponsorship and mentorship.

So we've developed some resources on these two areas which will be released in the coming weeks. And we're also looking at other areas that we can develop resources that make sense for us to do collaboratively. The whole people centric element of the consortium. We're looking at developing case studies to share people's experiences, expertise, understanding raise their profiles as well so that they're under development.

We're hoping to have those ready for the new year.

But I know you've probably still got loads of ideas of where this work can go. So thinking ahead, what can we expect to see?

So there's a lot of work around how do we raise the profile of the White Rose Consortium and so there's going to be lots of work around engagement going forwards. We really want to ensure that people know about us and that we're here to support them and that we're here to help them build those links across the institution.

And as I said earlier, we don't want the link just to be on the research side. We also want those links to be across professional services colleagues as well. So where does it make sense to come together, particularly those who maybe are research professionals or research adjacent. So what can we do to support them?

The Community Fund there is there to really help generate those ideas, support those networks. And if there is a problem that would make sense to solve collectively, let's bring a group together and look at how we can tackle that. As I said, we're people focused. We really want to celebrate the great work that's happening across our institutions.

So that's raising individuals profiles. It's also working, showing examples of best practice. So if there is anything that anyone wants to celebrate, please come and tell us. Let us know so that we can help promote that across our channels. Practically, there's lots of resources that we've got lots of ideas.

What I've loved most about this role is meeting people from all the three institutions and having some incredible conversations. And what's really been nice is that there's lots of appetite to work together and do things collaboratively. So it's thinking about what that is and how we can take shape. I particularly love my operations group, which is all practitioners.

So we come together twice a year and think about what makes sense for us to do. And then On that national scale, we're also going to be working with GW4, which is a consortium in the South West, who has recently released a report that calls on government to fix the gap in childcare support for postgraduate students.

So we're going to work with them to raise the awareness of that report, to lobby government, but also to showcase examples and bring case studies from our institutions into that report as well.

[00:14:06] Karen Hinxman: Just a few.

You've already mentioned some resources and case studies. So how can people access these resources and how can they find out more about the work you're doing?

We have a news feed, as well as a monthly newsletter, so please subscribe to our newsletter. We're on LinkedIn, we're on X but also feel free to drop us a line. So myself or one of the team will do our best to respond. So that's info at whiterose.ac.uk. So we are here to support you. So what do you need?

What, how can we help you? Come with your ideas, suggestions, some of them we can take forward, some of them we can put somewhere else, please come. Come and see us. And one thing that is really key for me at the consortium is whatever we produce will be open access. So any resources that we do, everything we want to promote it, we want to share it with the sector because there's so much good work happening.

But I just don't want to, I want to make sure that we're not all reinventing the wheel time and time again.

So this is us saying goodbye, but as always with my guests, I give them the last opportunity to say a final word of goodbye.

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