Recent REF successes have enabled us to celebrate the far-reaching impact of the research carried out here at the University by many colleagues over many years. But what about those not currently engaged in research activity? How can we support, develop and grow this community of staff to work towards becoming our successes of the future? 

Benefitting from Research Culture funding, the Hidden Assets Initiative aims to identify and work with research inactive staff, in order that we might support them in their future journeys as researchers and builds on the earlier Nobody Left Behind Strategy of BaL (approved in February 2017) to encourage research-inactive academic staff to engage or reengage with research. This project seeks to identify the research needs, barriers and interests of Hidden Assets, who have been identified by colleagues at the University of Birmingham as ‘academics at the Lecturer/Senior Lecturer level who are not currently engaged in research and scholarship activity.’ 

Hidden Assets are frequently from underrepresented groups at the university and have typically joined academia after a career in industry or the public sector. While they may hold PhDs and may have previously published articles, are currently not research active. These academics are difficult to target by existing research development initiatives at the university as they typically have heavy teaching and administrative workload allocations and find it difficult to begin or restart a program of research activity.  

There is a need to understand the goals, motivations and challenges faced by these individuals to determine how they might best be supported and developed. By improving participation in research by hidden assets, the university will deepen industry and community relationships via these individuals to facilitate future research and knowledge exchange activities.

Get involved!

Target Audience: Those who are currently research-inactive and would like support to engage or re-engage with research.

Commitment required of participants:

  • To attend an offsite workshop, delivered afternoon of Weds 29 June 2022, facilitated by a coaching professional and members of the leadership team that will include:
    • gathering insight from participants on the barriers and challenges to research and knowledge exchange engagement.
    • support and guidance on how to get the most out of your individual coaching sessions
  • To have arranged, with the external coach,  dates and times for four hours of individual coaching by July 11th 2022, aimed at providing support to overcome barriers and engage/re-engage with research (coaching sessions to be completed by September 30th 2022)
  • To support measurement of the value and impact of the coaching sessions by responding to post-programme evaluation surveys and discussions (sharing of the detail of individual coaching discussions held will not be expected)

If you would like to express an interest in being involved in this program, please contact ris@port.ac.uk, with the following information by Friday 27th May with the following information:

Expression of Interest

Name:

Job Title:

Dept./School and Faculty:

Line Manager Name:                                 

Reason for applying to be part of the program: (no more than 200 words)