Research Culture Cafes

An opportunity for you to share experiences of our current research culture.

As part of our ongoing work to create and promote a positive and inclusive research culture we are holding a series of café style conversations.  These are based on the format used by the Wellcome Trust as a space to discuss challenges and propose ideas.  By getting involved you can contribute to discussion on the challenges you face, what we are already doing well and could share more widely, and what would a better culture look like.  The Cafés form part of an ongoing project to promote a positive research culture, and the discussions will help to propose solutions for how the institution could change.

Collaboration and community are key to a vibrant, healthy culture so come along and take part.  Have your say.

Our Culture Cafés are run as small group discussions with a facilitator to help guide and direct the conversation.  There may be some information and resources shared at the time of advertising the café and on the day to define the remit. On the day, we will use some reflective questions  to help get the group conversations started.  Groups will contain a mix of up to 10 people.  The facilitator will make notes but these will be anonymised.  At the end of each Café the challenges, examples of best practice and ideas will be shared with all participants through our Research Culture Community.

Café conversations will be run regularly, approximately every two months. You are welcome to participate in as many as you wish. Each Café will have one or two themes  aligned to our Research Culture Strategic Objectives (SOs), which are listed below, and or other national initiatives which include Research Culture, like for examples the Concordat(s) and the Technician Commitment. As a result some cafes will also be dedicated to staff categories.

• SO1 Valuing diverse forms of research activity
• SO2 Embedding EDI principles in research
• SO3 Enabling Open Research practices
• SO4 Mutually supporting and developing research teams

Upcoming Cafes

Another part of the project is to build a Research Culture Community, a network to discuss further plans and to provide members with an opportunity to share their ideas and examples of best practice.  The Cafés and community will be supported by our Research Culture Team.  Join the Research Culture Community and get involved.