The Research Staff Assembly – a community approach to dialogical engagement with Researchers

By Dr Rhoda Stefanatos, Researcher Development Specialist for Research Staff, and Dr Elaine Gourlay, Research Culture Specialist for Communities and Collegiality

What does it mean to take a community approach to including, listening to and supporting our research staff?

In the Research Culture and Researcher Development (RC&RD) team, it means creating a space that allows Research Staff to come together, use their voice and stay informed. Moving away from a committee model towards a platform, which by design, centres the voices and experiences of Research Staff, where the agenda makes time for a dialogue of knowledge, expertise, and experiences good and bad.  From inception, the aim of the UofG Research Staff Assembly (RSA) was to realise a space that was accessible and visible, which included, engaged, and supported our research staff in their professional and career development. Our aim was to co-design a vehicle by which Research Staff are enabled to take up space and recognise their value and agency.

Establishing the RSA recognises the significance of supporting guided open discussions, consultations, and a culture of sharing, in giving researchers a voice within a vast institution. Empowering researchers, means creating a sense of ‘healthy activism’ wherein they as a collective have the power to make things work for them, and enabling them to take ownership of and recognise the agency they have over their professional prospects and careers.

First Steps

In June 2023 we launched with our first Assembly. It focused on co-designing the monthly hybrid hour that would support Research Staff across all disciplines, schools, colleges and campuses to connect, share, and gain an awareness of the influence and responsibility they hold as members of the research community. By reflecting on their experiences, they identified key topics and challenges they wanted to bring to this new platform to engage with and discuss. Since then, these monthly assemblies have engaged Research Staff and specialist Research Professional Staff in conversation on REF, Open Access publishing, Ethical Authorship, Researcher Networks, Mentoring and Promotions. In choosing to make this hybrid we wanted to ensure equity, and based on our own experience of hybrid events, we wanted to make sure that whether in person or online, you felt like you were in the room. More than just using fancy tech, we chose to have both in person and online participants, facilitators, and guests, to dedicate the first five minutes to getting to know who is in the room, and to keep the hybrid room open for an hour after the briefing, for when there is more to say or ask. We added extra displays and cameras so that everyone can see and hear what is going on and actively engage.  

The resulting conversations have been powerful. By establishing and supporting the RSA, we can use this power to facilitate the ambitions of our researchers, connect them to each other, to knowledge and expertise through specialist research professional staff and develop their capacity to act in favour of their professional and career development. The RSA also exists outside of the hybrid room, online via a dedicated MS Teams space where new conversations can start, and others can continue. We archive our monthly themed open and hybrid assemblies sharing a summary of news and opportunities from the team, the university, and the wider sector. This online space encourages members to foster community and culture, ask questions about a process or experience and share ideas, insights, or their latest research in real time.

A piece of the development puzzle

As a team, we believe that researchers should seek out and take up development opportunities that align with their ambitions. We encourage ‘choiceful’ engagement with the RSA, and the online and hybrid spaces are opt-in for researchers. In this next year of the RSA, we hope to engage researchers on more key topics including leadership development through Associate Supervision, Good Research Practice, and Research Culture Change. The RSA is a piece of a larger puzzle. It doesn’t stand alone but is at the core of our work to engage, communicate and develop researchers and, as with much of our growing framework of development for researchers it relies on bringing people together – researchers, the RC&RD team, specialist research professional staff from across the university – and inspiring them to share, create, and collaborate.

While the idea for the RSA might have come from our team, the RSA belongs to all the Researchers and Research Professional Staff who engage with it, speak up and ask difficult questions. If you haven’t yet engaged with RSA, we welcome you to add your voice, we hope to continue to grow, and strengthen this community in 2024, further amplifying the voices of Research Staff. We look forward to supporting our colleagues as they continue to shape their Research Staff Assembly.