This ambitious research project brings together a multidisciplinary academic and professional services team working in partnership with our research community. The project aims to improve, recognise and reward leadership practices that build psychologically safe and inclusive research environments.

Funded by a £1M award from the Wellcome Institutional Fund for Research Culture (IFRC), this 30-month project will develop and evaluate new ways to support and reward leaders in research, to create individual and team relationships through which people and research can thrive.  

We aim to have a better understanding of the broader context that enables or impedes psychological safety and inclusion within research teams and environments; some of which will be unique to our context in higher education. 

Background

Recent consultations around research culture at Newcastle University have highlighted a real and pressing need to build safer and more inclusive research environments. The challenges identified by our research community relate to psychological safety, a concept that has been widely studied in other sectors, but which is less understood in the context of academic research and scholarship. 

The project draws on two decades of research evidence that teams work best when members take interpersonal risks in sharing ideas, offering feedback for improved performance and see mistakes as part of the learning process 1. These ways of working can often be overlooked as unimportant and undervalued in an outcome focused world; they are invisible, hard to measure, and evolve over time. Our project focusses on how leadership practices can establish ways of working that promote courage, curiosity and collaboration in their teams. 

How do we intend to work to inspire change? 

We will continually take a reflexive approach, considering how our learning can be embedded into other leadership programmes at Newcastle, and be made available for a wider range of colleagues. We will also advocate for changes that are barriers to the project’s aims, and freely share our tools, resources and knowledge more widely within the sector to make a positive difference.