An agenda for change

The Horizons Institute was established to do things differently, but what does that mean in practice, and how are we backing up our words by our actions? In this blog, Horizons Institute Manager Lauren Wray draws on the ambitions and measures of success, co-produced by the Horizons team and critical friends to outline how and why we are seeking to influence and affect research culture change.

An initial spark

The spark of an idea for an interdisciplinary research institute at the University of Leeds emerged in 2019/2020, conceived by Horizons Institute Director Professor Stuart Taberner and Head of Interdisciplinary Research Samantha Aspinall. The idea emerged from the perceived need for a platform to connect colleagues at the University of Leeds across disciplines, schools, and faculties. They also identified a need to support and strengthen connections between university staff and those at other academic institutions nationally and internationally, with communities, with business, those working in industry and policy.

It is clear that the University of Leeds is a hotbed of ideas and of ground-breaking research. But this research, for the large part, remains in siloes, leaving untapped potential for innovation through reciprocal collaboration and integration.

Ambitions and measuring success

Officially launched in January 2022, the Horizons Institute was invited, with the backing of senior management at the University of Leeds, to co-create a set of ambitions and measures. These were to place collaboration, equity, research culture change, and interdisciplinarity at the centre of all decision making, moving away from “traditional” key performance indicators such as income generated and quantity of publications.

Our journey to develop a different set of meaningful ambitions and measures combined our experience and expertise in interdisciplinary research leadership, policy, communications and engagement, research management and development. We also had wider discussions with colleagues at and beyond the University of Leeds, including our Internal Oversight Board, International Advisory Board, and Steering Committee. We were interested in how colleagues imagined “doing” research differently — how we measure what works and what doesn’t, and use this information to inform our practice and approaches.

The ideas, aims and objectives are captured here and underpin the ethos, the why and the how of the Horizons Institute: https://www.leeds.ac.uk/horizons-institute/doc/ambitions-measures-success

Collaboration, blue skies, risk taking

We know from widespread consultation that colleagues at the University of Leeds generally find it easier to identify partners to collaborate with from other academic institutions than they do identifying partners at Leeds.

We know emphasis on income generation, pressure to publish, casualization, increasing workloads and competing demands, place huge pressure on staff in unequal measure at the intersection of gender and ethnicity, for example. The current culture of research is not conducive to blue sky thinking, to taking risks, to creating time and space to reflect and collaborate.

We know more work needs to be done to eradicate and dismantle inequality, hierarchies and power dynamics that exist within, across and beyond campus, and it is important to interrogate our own role and position within the systems we operate.

Alongside reasons already outlined, a lack of opportunities, reward and recognition, support and training, and challenges such as finding a common language, means research continues to operate in silo. But interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research is essential to respond to the complex challenges of societal and global significance we face today.

With this the backdrop, we are seeking to create a research culture where collaboration across disciplines is business as usual, where questions of equity, diversity and inclusion are integrated into all areas, where success is redefined and “failures” are considered valuable, informative, and discussed openly.

Fostering new ideas

We’re a home for early stage ambitious and blue skies research ideas that integrate methods, approaches, theoretical frameworks, and data from across disciplines and sectors to respond challenges of societal and global significance.

We’re about fostering ambition, and providing support and training to help realise that ambition and next steps. We create opportunities for connection and conversation through multiple and diverse entry points, and provide time and space to reflect on research, challenges, and skills in new ways.

We’re about creative safe and constructive space for risk taking and entering into the unknown, and about open and critical dialogue, so we can evolve together and be responsive to the community we work with. We’re about flexibility, co-production, iterative working.

We know that alone, we don’t have all the answers, that we are enriched by the people we work with, but that we have room to grow and that we have a responsibility to participate in and create an equitable and inclusive culture and society.

Values

These values, the why of everything we do, guide our current strands of work. We’re currently co-designing our Headline Pillar programme, ‘What comes after the Sustainable Development Goals’ with multiple entry points to engage and connect locally, nationally, and globally.

We’re mid-way through a two-phase selection process for four new challenge-led network where applicants are supported to work closely with the Horizons team and the community at Leeds to iteratively develop their ideas. Within this, teaching and admin time is bought out by the Horizons Institute to support the establishment of the final four networks.

Through our Global Academy and upcoming mentorship scheme, we’re creating opportunities to come together to develop skills, ideas, and networks. We’re prioritizing our own learning and working with independent experts to upskill, apply learning to practice, and to ensure that our work actively involves, supports and prioritises those from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds.

We’re also proactively and positively engaging with finance, HR, and contract processes, striving to make processes more accessible. Within each strand of work, we’ve designed evaluation mechanisms to ensure there are multiple channels and opportunities for feedback and as a team, we create time to reflect, to develop, and hold each other accountability.

A work in progress

The Horizons Institute doesn’t necessarily have all the answers and we may get things wrong along the way. But we hope that by outlining the process of developing our ambitions and why they are important to us as a team, we show our commitment to embodying our own principles of openness, transparency, and accountability.

We hope too, that you might want to work with us in our endeavours to effect and influence change.