Introduction
Leading research to cure haemophilia; a revolutionary new political theory; the latest advances to underpin the treatment of cancer and heart disease; pioneering developments in artificial intelligence,; an acclaimed biography of one of the 20th century’s greatest leaders. These are just some of the many recent outputs of research at Queen Mary. The quality of our research and impact is recognised all over the world. We will build upon our success, specifically by significantly increasing capacity in key focused areas and bringing research excellence together with real impact at all times. In keeping with our ethos, we attract scholars from all over the world and will create more opportunities for them to work together and make sure we are supporting and nurturing them at all stages of their careers.
Entrepreneurship, innovation and engagement are an embedded part of our research culture. We will maintain our commitment to achieving impact and involving end users, patients, policy-makers and the public in the research we do. This core area of our strategy is delivered through our research and innovation principles supported by three pillars of excellence shown below.
The research and innovation principles that inform this strategy are to:
- Attract the best researchers from all over the world, and develop our staff and research students to become world-leaders in disciplinary and interdisciplinary research and innovation.
- Significantly increase external research funding to support our research activities from multiple national and international sources. Our internal funding will be used to stimulate new activity in priority areas of research, used to leverage external funding, and to focus on defined areas of excellence and interdisciplinary research.
- Provide a world-class virtual and physical research infrastructure, available to all researchers, supported by internal and significant external funding. Our professional research support staff will be effective, efficient and agile in providing support through the full life-cycle of all our research projects.
- Produce world-leading research outputs as assessed by our peers, with a clear and disciplined focus on global and local economic and societal impact. We will ensure that our research is accessible by adherence to recognised open science principles.
- Regularly assess how we support, review and undertake research to foster diversity and inclusion and ensure that our research practice is of the highest quality in terms of research ethics and integrity.
Our three pillars of research excellence that inform this strategy are:
- Providing world-class support for our researchers.
- Creating a world-class research environment, focused on our strengths, which enables staff and students to flourish.
- Producing world-leading research outputs and ensuring that research development, innovation, enterprise and social impact are embedded in all our research activities.
The three pillars of excellence are presented below.
Providing world-class support for our researchers.
To support our researchers at every stage of their careers we will:
- Attract world-class research talent from all corners of the globe, and grow and develop our own.
- Support researchers to work across disciplinary, organisational and geographical boundaries.
- Lead innovation in doctoral education and support, developing and significantly increasing our PhD student population and welcoming funded full and part-time students from traditional and alternative routes from all over the world.
- Significantly increase our number of externally-funded Research Fellows and postdoctoral researchers and support them to develop a world-class research career.
- Support researchers to significantly increase external research income, and invest in targeted areas, including through our University Research Institutes (URIs), that align with national and international strategic priorities to maximise impact.
- Ensure all our researchers are supported to be leaders in their fields, through investment in leadership, management and supervision training.
Producing world-leading research outputs and ensuring that research development, innovation, enterprise and social impact are embedded in all our research activities
To create a world-class research environment we will:
- Create Research Institutes (URIs), University Research Centres (URCs) and University Research Networks (URNs) based on our existing and developing research strengths and societal need. These will be under continuous review, flexed to align with our strengths, and will enable focused investment.
- Build upon our discipline strengths to attract and retain the best talent, train future researchers and shape the disciplines nationally and internationally. Based on these strengths we will significantly increase our interdisciplinary research to address future socioeconomic global challenges.
- Provide sustainable and accessible world-class research facilities and attract significant UK and international external funding to support our physical and virtual research environment.
- Encourage our research community to collaborate across the world, maintaining an agile approach to individual and research group partnerships, and grow and invest in a small number of strategic international partnerships with leading institutions.
- Significantly increase our industrial partnerships, supporting funded collaborative research.
- Host Centres for Doctoral Training, and develop collaborative doctoral programmes with strategic partners, to support research in our faculties and in our University Research Institutes (URIs).
- Mobilise our alumni worldwide – our global family – to help develop new research and industry links.
Creating a world-class research environment focused on our strengths that allow staff and students to flourish
To achieve excellence in research outputs and impact we will:
- Nurture a world-class research culture for our entire community.
- Continually increase the volume of our world-leading outputs, as recognised by peer communities.
- Support innovation, development, entrepreneurship and impact to address global and national challenges, including those articulated in the national Industrial Strategy, and maintain our position as a leader in public-engaged research.
- Embed a culture at Queen Mary where impact, innovation and engagement are an innate part of all research activity, and publicise our impact internally, nationally and internationally to enhance our global reputation.
- Build on our core values to further embed a culture of engaged research practice, creating an environment where research can be shaped, conducted, and results disseminated with the public as partners, at home and overseas.
- Become a UK leader in the measurable impact of licences and spin-outs from our research community.