By Dr Karen Gordon, Talent Lab Project Officer and Researcher in Psychology and Education.
Seed funding is often treated as a discrete opportunity: aligned as a small pump-priming award designed as a ‘stepping stone’ to generate early outputs and leverage future funding. Seed funding can do more than support early research projects – it can actively shape how researchers learn to lead collaboratively and in practice. This post examines what happens when funding is intentionally embedded within a developmental programme, and why this matters for research professional staff designing awards which aim to build capability, confidence and collaboration alongside research outputs. This post will discuss the benefits of intentionally embedding seed funding into a broader interdisciplinary leadership development programme, where the award is not simply a funding mechanism, but a designated space for practicing research leadership in a collaborative way.
The Glasgow Crucible Seed Fund
The Glasgow Crucible Seed Fund is an opportunity which is accessible to researchers at the end of a five-month cohort-based programme, which is explicitly designed to support interdisciplinary collaboration, research leadership and collegiality. Crucible participants can apply for the award post-programme, having already worked intensively on interdisciplinary collaboration over the course of six in-person programme days. The integration of the Seed Fund post-programme is therefore not intended to only support research activity, but also to translate learning into practice.
Cohort learning to leadership in practice
When application for the Seed Fund opened, our participants had spent five months working as an interdisciplinary cohort; developing their leadership and collaboration skills. The Seed Fund was the next step – an opportunity to apply their learning within the real-world conditions of a research project; managing budgets, timelines and their project teams.
Unsurprisingly, leadership and project management development emerged strongly in participant feedback about their experience of the fund. This aligns with the Crucible Seed Fund’s intentional focus of providing researchers with a space to lead and develop their leadership practice. Funded PI’s noted that this opportunity provided them with a space to develop their leadership style and skills, navigating different perspectives of the team whilst supporting interdisciplinary collaboration.
Holding responsibility for the research project required awardees to balance research goals with timelines, and negotiate disciplinary differences through collaboration. Researchers reflected that the project required them to take initiative and enhance their project management skills – which directly contributed to increasing their confidence as leaders.
The Seed Fund acted as a leadership lab – intentionally designed to allow researchers the space to practice skills within a real research project; progressing learning into real-world experience.
Enacting interdisciplinarity
Interdisciplinary collaboration is the foundation of the Glasgow Crucible, structurally embedded in all six programme days. The Seed Fund projects brought together researchers from across colleges and disciplines, whilst also offering the opportunity to work with external partners and community groups. This required teams to navigate differences in academic language, methodologies, and expectations.
Participants reflected on the challenges of this work, discussing the need for patience and understanding in collaboration whilst they developed a shared language to all actively engage in the project in a way which allowed all voices to be heard.
The Seed Fund normalised the complexity of these challenges of interdisciplinary work, whilst supporting researchers to overcome them in real-time. By navigating these dynamics within a supported funding environment, researchers could experiment, adapt, and reflect; moving from valuing interdisciplinary work to enacting it. The process of this was central to their professional development and researchers reflected that this learning provided a strong foundation for engaging in future collaborative projects.
Building confidence and career narratives
Beyond skills development, researchers consistently identified that engaging in their Seed Fund projects contributed towards increasing their confidence and professional identity. The opportunity to lead as a PI (often for the first time), provided a tangible marker of independence which was beneficial in multiple ways.
Researchers noted that the Seed Fund supported them to increase their research profile and credibility within their department, offering a sense of increased professional identity and independence. Further to this, participants also discussed how the experience of being a PI on a Seed Fund project supported their career progression, whereby the skills and outputs were directly beneficial when applying for academic jobs and developing their career narrative in job applications.
The Seed Fund extended beyond the projects which were undertaken. It also supported researchers to evidence clear narratives of their leadership, independence and capability – narratives which matter in job applications, fellowship bids, and longer-term career transitions.
Designing Seed Funding with intent
The evaluation data for the 2024 Seed Funding provides evidence as to the benefits of embedding awards with intentional design. Through integration of funding within a larger cohort programme, this created continuity between learning and practice.
For Research Professional Staff, this raises important considerations. Firstly, finding opportunities to align seed funding awards with broader developmental programmes can create increased benefits for researchers by providing a space to develop their experiences in a holistic way. It is a deliberate opportunity to engage in and change research culture – shaping how researchers experienced and enacted leadership and collaboration. Secondly, how we position funding can provide a safe space to move from valuing collaboration to enacting it. This highlights the value of designing programmes and awards which allow interdisciplinary collaboration to be learning through doing.
Finally, it is important for Research Professional Staff running programmes of this nature, to evaluate funding in terms of personal and professional development as well as outputs, and it offers a reminder than the design of funding schemes offers greater opportunity than solely measuring outputs. These are all considerations which we will continue to take as we follow-up with researchers, 6-months and 12-months post award, to understand the longer-term effects of engaging with the Seed Fund and developing as more confident, capable and connected research leaders.
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