Our Research Culture Initiatives

Flourish has embarked on a series of initiatives to develop a positive research culture at our University. These activities cover the breadth and depth of our research environment and seek to have broad impact across specific staff groups. Our research culture actions span across multiple themes: 

• Early Career Researcher Development 
• Career Precarity 
• Mid-Career Researcher Development 
• Enhancing the visibility, career development and recognitions of technicians 
• Celebrating research
• Open scholarship
• Training for postgraduate researchers
• Creative approaches to developing our research culture ecosystem 

Below are some of the initiatives currently underway through Flourish@Durham 

Research Staff Association

Flourish is working alongside the Durham University Research Staff Association to increase the visibility and recognition of our research staff. The RSA support our researcher community in a variety of ways, including establishing a new Researcher Development Grant fund to support researchers' research and scholarly activity. The aim of this fund is to support the research community secure access to funding to support their individual researcher development, particularly when they do not have access to any other available funding. 

Find out more about the RSA (DU Login Only) 

Technician Commitment

Flourish works alongside the Technician Commitment Steering Group to ensure visibility, recognition, career development, and sustainability for technical staff working in higher education and research, across all disciplines. As part of the University's commitment to enhancing research culture and supporting the Technicians Commitment, funding has been allocated to support the University's technical community to encourage career development, professional registrations and external engagements and interactions. 

Find out more about the Technician Commitment

Faculty Projects 

Enhancing Research Culture funding and our student interns, Flourish has supported diverse activities across our four academic faculties. Funding has supported principal investigator and leadership coaching, postgraduate research away days, writing retreats, graduate destinations tracking and supporting interdisciplinary research.  

Leading Researchers Programme 

Our university has introduced a new development programme in 2023, “Leading Researchers”, delivered by 64 Million Artists (https://64millionartists.com/).

This is a collaborative interdisciplinary leadership development programme, designed to enable mid-career and senior academics to raise their research ambitions and achieve their goals. It is specifically aimed towards colleagues who are thinking about their next big idea, with a view to supporting them as they seek to develop this idea and related large funding proposals in the future.

Research Culture Islands - A Creative Approach for Developing a Healthy Research Culture Ecosystem

Research Culture Islands Creative Facilitation Workshop

‘Research Culture Islands’ is a creative workshop designed by the Research Culture Team in collaboration with the Institute for Medical Humanities Creative Facilitation Unit to explore through metaphor how we create a healthy research culture ecosystem. The aim of the workshop is to encourage participants to explore the research culture landscape and express some of the challenges and opportunities in a creative and safe environment.

For facilitators, the workshop offers new avenues, correlations and challenges about developing a positive research culture. The Research Culture Island maps provide insight which might not be expressed through a Q&A discussion. This workshop could feed into research culture strategies and project delivery and also enable further consultation on specific themes.  

The Research Culture Islands is a open and living resource which can be used across different contexts. If you have feedback or developments from using the resource, please contact us: research.culture@durham.ac.uk