Funded Projects
Research England has awarded Enhancing Research Culture funding to Sussex annually since it first piloted the scheme in 2021. This allocation can be used in any of the areas covered by the Research and Development People and Culture Strategy and is governed by the Research Culture Steering Group, who advise the Pro-Vice Chancellor of Research and Innovation.
Over the course of the last three years, we have funded a range of exciting projects and initiatives, large and small, led by RIS, Schools and most recently by Faculties. Our 2023 Research Culture consultation with the research community enabled us to focus spending on the important gaps and issues our staff identified. In 2024 we ran an open call to enable a range of new projects responding to local cultural challenges within our Enabling Plan Priority Areas (Belonging, Maximising Potential, Open Research and Collaboration).
| PI | School | Title | Description |
| OLIVER, Seb | MPS / VC's Office | Summer of Research | Pilot of a Summer of Research between June 2023 and July 2023. The Summer of Research ended with a central Awards Ceremony and Celebratory Lunch in Bramber House. During the Ceremony, we presented the Research Culture and Research with Impact Awards and launched the Centres of Excellence. |
| NIVEN, Jeremy | LifeSci | Supervisor Training | The supervisor training ERC project had one central objective, which was to produce a comprehensive set of training materials for the supervisors of PGRs. The current programme of supervisor development has been focused on: (i) the development of asynchronous materials; (ii) piloting workshops; and (iii) developing sustainable resources |
| DIENES, Zoltan | Psychology | Reproducibility Statistician | The aim was to provide a service ensuring and certifying the computational reproducibility of papers in Psychology about to be submitted to a journal. All but one manuscript had such issues. As a result of the success, money has been set aside for a permanent post. |
| TATHAM, Suzanne | Library And Learning Services | Open Research | We worked on identifying and importing research data metadata records into Elements/Figshare, to make open research data more visible and accessible. We organised DCC (Data Curation Centre) training to cover FAIR principles, Data Ethics, Data selection and preservation, Costing RDM and business planning, Delivering and building RDM services. |
| POTTER, Claire | Research Development & Innovation | Application support / interview preparation & coaching for significant strategic bids | The project was to support and develop our researchers' capabilities and opportunities in order to maximise their success in grant capture. We have had feedback from the researchers who value this support both for its informative nature; it helps their confidence and makes them feel valued by the University. |
| MANCINI, Erika | LifeSci | ECR Seed Fund | The Research Culture Seed Fund aims to foster a creative, inclusive, and collaborative research culture. It targets Early Career Researchers (ECRs) to initiate innovative approaches that enhance the research environment at the university. These initiatives serve as pilot projects for new ideas that could become models to be implemented university-wide. |
| MANCINI, Erika | LifeSci | Sussex Fellowship and First Grant Accelerator Programme | This project’s aim was to support the careers of early career researchers by a fellowship application support programme. This was achieved by running a “Sussex Fellowship and First Grant Accelerator Programme” delivered by an external provider, supported by Research Development. This was run as an interactive masterclass style training. |