In September, Science Minister Lord Vallance announced a pause to developing REF 2029 to allow REF and the funding bodies to take stock. Today, REF 2029 work resumes with a refreshed focus to support a UK research system that delivers knowledge and innovation with impact, improving lives and creating growth across the country.
Research England has undertaken a parallel programme of work during the pause, intended to deliver outcomes that align with Government’s priorities and vision for higher education as outlined in the recently published Post-16 Education and Skills white paper. Calling this a pause doesn’t reflect the complexity, pace and challenge faced in delivering the programme over the last three months.
Since September, we have:
explored the option of baseline performance in research culture being a condition of funding
considered how our funding allocation mechanisms in England could be modified to better reward quality, as part of our ongoing review of Strategic Institutional Research Funding (SIRF)
fast-tracked existing activity related to the allocation of mainstream quality-related research funding (QR).
developed our plans to consider the future of research assessment.
Over the last three months to progress this work, we’ve engaged thoughtfully with groups across the English higher education and research sector, as well as with the devolved funding bodies, to help us understand the wider context and refine our approaches. Let me outline where we’ve got to – and where we’re going next – with the work we’ve been doing.
Setting a baseline for research cultures
Each university, department and team are unique. They have their own values, priorities and ways of working. I therefore like to think of ‘research cultures and environments’, using the term in plural, to reflect this diversity. The report of the REF People, Culture and Environment pilot, also published today, confirms that there is excellent practice in this area across the higher education sector. REF 2029 offers an opportunity to recognise and reward those institutions and units that are creating the open, inclusive and collaborative environments that enable excellent research and researchers to thrive.
At the same time, we think there are some minimum standards that should be expected of all providers in receipt of public funding. To promote these standards, we will be strengthening the terms and conditions of Research England funding related to research culture. In the first instance, this will mean a shift from expecting certain standards to be met, to requiring institutions to meet them.
We are very conscious not to increase burden on the sector or create unnecessary bureaucracy. This will only succeed by engaging closely with the sector to understand how this can work effectively in practice. To this end, we will be engaging with groups in early 2026 to establish rigorous standards that are relevant across the diversity of English institutions. As far as possible, we will use existing reporting mechanisms such as the annual assurance report provided by signatories to the Research Integrity Concordat. While meeting the conditions will not be optional, we will support institutions that don’t yet meet all the requirements, working together and utilising additional reporting to help with and monitor improvements. And because research cultures aren’t static, we will evolve our conditions over time to reflect changes in the sector.
This will lead to sector-wide improvements that we can all get behind:
support for everyone who contributes to excellent and impactful research: researchers, technicians and others in vital research-enabling roles, across all career stages
ensuring research in England continues to be done with integrity
ensuring that is also done openly
strengthening responsible research assessment.
Our next steps are to engage with the sector and relevant groups as part of the process of making changes to our terms and conditions of funding, and to establish low-burden assurance mechanisms. For example, working as part of the Researcher Development Concordat Strategy Group, we will collectively streamline and strengthen the concordat, making it easier for institutions to implement this important cross-sectoral agreement.
These changes will complement the assessment of excellent research environments in the REF and the inspiring practice we see across the sector. Championing vibrant research cultures and environments is a mission that transcends the REF — it’s the foundation for maintaining and enhancing the UK’s world-leading research, and we will continue to work with the devolved funding bodies to fulfil the mission.
Modelling funding mechanisms
The formula-based, flexible research funding Research England distributes to English universities is crucial to underpinning the HE research landscape, and supporting the
financial sustainability of the sector. We are aware that that this funding is increasingly being spread more thinly.
As part of the review of strategic institutional research funding (SIRF), we are working to understand the wider effectiveness of our funding approaches and consider alternative allocation mechanisms. Work on this review is continuing at speed. We will provide an update to the sector next year on progress, as well as the publication of the independent evaluation of SIRF, anticipated in early 2026.
Building on this, we have been considering how our existing mechanisms in England could be modified to better reward quality of research. This work looks at how different strands of SIRF – from mainstream QR to specialist provider funding – overlap, and how that affects university finances across English regions and across institution types. We are continuing to explore options for refining our mainstream QR formula and considering the consequences of those different options. This is a complex piece of work, requiring greater time and attention, and we expect next year to be a key period of engagement with the sector.
The journey ahead
While it may seem early to start thinking about assessment after REF 2029, approaches to research assessment are evolving rapidly and it is important that we are able to embrace the opportunities offered by new technologies and data sources when the moment comes. We have heard loud and clear that early clarity on guidance reduces burden for institutions and we want to be ready to offer that clarity. A programme of work that maximises the opportunity offered by REF 2029 to shape the foundation for future frameworks will be commencing in spring 2026.
Another priority will be to consider how Research England as the funding body for England, and as part of UKRI, can support the government’s aim to encourage a greater focus on areas of strength in the English higher education sector, drawing on the excellence within all our institutions. As I said at the ARMA conference earlier in the year, there is a real opportunity for universities to identify and focus on the unique contributions they make in research.
The end of the year will provide the sector (and my colleagues in Research England and the REF teams) with some much-needed rest. January 2026 will see us pick back up a reinvigorated SIRF review, informed by the REF pause activity. We will continue to refine our research funding and policy to – as UKRI’s new mission so deftly puts it – advance knowledge, improve lives and drive growth.
Union workers in Los Angeles protest Öztürk’s arrest on April 1, 2025.
Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University Ph.D. student from Turkey who was arrested by immigration officials earlier this year, is returning to teaching and research months after her release from detention, multiplesources reported.
Öztürk garnered national attention for being one of the first students swept up in the Trump administration’s attack on international students who had expressed pro-Palestinian beliefs; she had co-authored an op-ed in the student newspaper calling on Tufts to condemn Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Though she was released from detention in May, her status in the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System, a digital records system of international student information, was not restored, preventing her from teaching or engaging in research for months.
U.S. District Judge Denise J. Casper granted Öztürk’s request for a preliminary injunction restoring her SEVIS status on Monday. The judge agreed that the termination of her records had caused “irreparable harm” by preventing her from accessing employment, professional development and doctoral training in the last year of her Ph.D. program.
As Labour eyes reshaping the higher education sector, it risks reviving a binary divide that history shows would weaken UK research.
While there is much to admire in the post-16 education and skills white paper regarding the vision for upskilling the population, there are some more difficult proposals. There in the shadows lies the call for HE institutions to specialise, with the lurking threat that many will lose their research funding in some, but perhaps many, areas, in order to better fund those with more intensive research.
The threat resides in the very phrasing used to describe research funding reform in the white paper, the “strategic distribution of research activity across the sector” to ensure institutions are “empowered to build deep expertise in areas where they can lead.” What is the benchmark here for judging whether someone can lead?
It raises once again the question: should non-intensive research institutions – by which I largely here mean post-92 universities – undertake research at all?
Since the paper came out, both Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Liz Kendall and science minister Sir Patrick Vallance have stressed that this “specialisation” will not privilege the traditional elite institutions, with Sir Patrick describing as “very bizarre” the idea that prioritisation necessarily means concentration of power in a few universities.
Liz Kendall echoes this logic, framing strategically focused funding as akin to a “no-compromise approach,” similar to investing more intensely in select Olympic sports to win medals rather than spreading resources thinly over many.
Yet for many post-92 institutions, this re-engineering of UK research funding spells very real danger. Under a model that favours “deep expertise” in fewer, strongly performing institutions, funding for more broadly based teaching and research universities risks erosion. The very students and communities that post-92 universities serve – often more diverse, more regional, and less elite – may find themselves further marginalised.
Moreover, even where teaching-only models are adopted, there is already private concern that degrees taught without regular input from research-active staff risk being perceived as inferior, despite charging similar fees. Pushing these providers towards a “teaching-only” role risks repeating a mistake we thought we had left behind before 1992, when polytechnics undertook valuable research but were excluded from national frameworks.
Excellence and application
When I wrote earlier this year that so-called “research minnows” have a vital role in UK arts and humanities doctoral research, the argument was simple: diversity of institutions, methods, locations, and people strengthens research. That truth matters even more today.
Before 1992, polytechnics undertook valuable research in health, education, design and industry partnerships, amongst other things. But they were structurally excluded from national assessment and funding. In 1989, Parliament described that exclusion as an “injustice,” now it appears it may be seen as just. Yet it’s not clear what has materially changed to form that view, beyond a desire to better fund some research.
The 1992 reforms did not “invent” research in the ex-polytechnics. They recognised it – opening the door to participation in the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), quality-related funding and Research Council grants. Once given visibility, excellence surfaced quickly. It did so because it had always been there.
In the 1996 Research Assessment Exercise – only the second in which post-92s could take part – De Montfort University’s Built Environment submission was rated 4 out of 5*. That placed it firmly in the category of nationally excellent research with international recognition, a standard many established pre-92 departments did not reach in that assessment panel. Indeed, the University of Salford topped the unit of assessment with 5*, just as City did in Library Studies. In Civil Engineering, the 5s of UCL and Bristol were also matched by City.
In Physics, Hertfordshire with a 4 equalled most Russell Group universities, as did their score in Computer Science. In the areas of Linguistics and in Russian Thames Valley (University of West London) and Portsmouth earned 5s respectively, equalling Oxford and Cambridge. In Sports Liverpool John Moores and Brighton topped the ranking alongside Loughborough with their 5s.
And it wasn’t just the ex-polytechnics that shone in many areas; the universities formed from institutes also did. The University of Gloucester outperformed Cambridge in Town and City Planning with their 4 against a 3a. Southampton Solent received a 4 in History, equalling York.
The RAE 1996 results are worth recalling; as new universities who had previously not had the seed funding monies of the older universities, we certainly punched above our weight.
Since their re-designation as universities, and even before, post-92 universities have built distinctive and complementary research cultures: applied, interdisciplinary, and place-anchored. Their work is designed to move quickly from knowledge to practice – spanning health interventions to creative industries, curriculum reform to urban sustainability.
Applied and interdisciplinary strength was evident in 1996 in the high scores (4) in areas of Allied Health, (Greenwich, Portsmouth and Sheffield Hallam), sociology (4) (City), Social Policy (4) (London South Bank and Middlesex). Art and Design was dominated by post 92s, as were Communications and Cultural Studies (with 5s for Westminster and University of East London). In Music, City (5), DMU and Huddersfield (4) saw off many pre-92s.
This is not second-tier research. It broadens the national portfolio, connects directly to communities, and trains the professionals who sustain public services. To turn these universities into “teaching-only” providers would not only weaken their missions, it would shrink the UK’s research base at the very moment that the government wants it to grow.
Learning history’s lessons
Research, which as we know universities undertake at a loss, has been subsidised over the last decades through cross subsidy from international student fees and other methods. Those who have been able to charge the highest international fees have had greater resource.
But I wonder what the UK research and economic landscape would look like now if thirty years ago national centres of excellence were created following the 1996 RAE, rather than letting much of our excellent national research wither because there was no institutional cross subsidy available? Had that been undertaken we would have stronger research now, with centres of research excellence in places where the footprint of that discipline has entirely disappeared.
There is a temptation to concentrate funding in fewer institutions, on the assumption that excellence lives only in the familiar elite. But international evidence shows that over-concentration delivers diminishing returns, while broader distribution fosters innovation and resilience. Moreover, our focus on golden triangles, clusters and corridors of innovation, can exclude those more geographically remote areas; we might think of the University of Lincoln’s leadership of advancing artificial intelligence in defence decision-making or agri-tech, or Plymouth’s marine science expertise. Post-92 research is often conducted hand-in hand with industry; a model that is very much needed.
If the government wants results – more innovation, stronger services, a wider skills base – it must back promising work wherever it emerges, not only in the institutions the system has historically favoured.
The binary divide was abolished in 1992 because it limited national capacity and ignored excellence outside a privileged tier. Re-creating that exclusion under a new label would repeat the same mistake, and exclude strong place-based research.
If Labour wants a stronger, fairer system, it must resist the lure of neat hierarchies and support the full spectrum of UK excellence: theoretical and applied, lab-based and practice-led, national and local. That is the promise of the so-called “minnows” – not a drag on ambition, but one of the surest ways to achieve it. Sometimes minnows grow into big fish!
Fund wherever there is excellence, and let that potential grow – spread opportunity wide enough for strengths to surface, especially in institutions that widen participation and anchor regional growth. The lesson is clear: when you sideline parts of the sector, you risk cutting off strengths before they are seen.
The Public Health Resonance Project at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa collaborated with a talented artist to create illustrations to better share their research. Have you incorporated art into your research communications?
The Public Health Resonance Project at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa “amplifies unique attributes and deep connections across regionally and culturally relevant physical activities for health promotion and community wellness, locally and globally.”
Art and illustration can enhance how you share your research. Collaboration between the Public Health Resonance Project and a talented artist included feedback from the whole team to ensure the illustrations were culturally relevant to the research. “It was necessary.”
This episode features
Dr. Tetine Sentell, co-lead of the Project and Chin Sik & Hyun Sook Chung Endowed Chair in Public Health Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa
Esme Yokooji, a graduate student in Public Health and social media coordinator for the Project
The episode on Art and Design to Share Your Research Story felt so special. It’s the 1st time these collaborators have all come together on video 🎧🎙️✨
I love that I got to design their website and bring us together for this conversation. We talk about the research, art, and share 3 beautiful new illustrations with you.
There’s many ways to be more visual with your research such as data visualization, illustration, comics, science art, photography, video. I love that the PH Resonance Project found an artistic partner in Sunnu Rebecca Choi.
I hope this video inspires you. Save this post for later. You may not have 32m 5s to watch or listen today. But save it even if you just have a hint of ‘I want art for my research’ and you’re unsure how you’ll get there.
A dream I have is that more research groups, labs, and centers invest in collaborating with talented artists like Rebecca. These partnerships can help people around the world engage with (and share) research that’s meaningful to them. And also I love art.
Omg if this post (or the video) inspires you to reach out to an artist about working together? Please share it with me, I would love that! 🥹
Behind-the-scenes
Before we dive into the interview, I have a quick story to share with you about recording. Or, you can skip right to the interview.
My computer crashed right in the middle of our recording 💻😱
I’m freaking out. My desktop computer light is blinking red at me like a danger sign. When I try to cycle the computer on the fan goes crazy.
The podcast episode going live today? There was a moment there I thought it wasn’t gonna happen. When I finally made it back on, maybe 10 minutes later, I was delighted to find my guest happily chatting away. When I went back to watch the recording, they were so cute. “Oops! Looks like our host has dropped off,” and then right back to their conversation about art and research.
We were able to complete our recording. But this episode needed a bit more.
We had high resolution art to share. There was a story in there that needed attention to bring out 🎨✨️
And thank goodness I sought help. I soon learned my own audio/video? Parts of my solo video were unusable. Super lagged.
Luckily, I have a talented husband I’ve been teaming up with for his professor dad’s art focused YouTube channel. I love that Matthew can help.
The video is finally ready for you. Thank you!
Technical problems may happen 💯
Have you worried about something going wrong with your computer too? Things may go wrong with tech, but I hope it doesn’t for you! 🫶
Every time something goes wrong, I get anxious about my own unsurity of what comes next. People are often kind and understanding. When I’m the one experiencing technical issues, it feels like a huge deal and inconvenience to people. I have to remind myself: When I’m on the other side of that? I always understand. It’s super relatable. I can’t envision myself getting mad, angry, or hurt but someone else’s technical glitch. If your computer crashes in the middle of our meeting, I’ll totally get it too.
I wanted to share this story with you because for a moment there? It felt like this podcast episode may not happen. But it did. We made it happen. I’m so happy / relieved. I’m proud to share it with you 👋😄
The special 2024 logo was designed by Sunnu Rebecca Choi.
Tetine: Rebecca, we love you so much. I’m so excited to meet you in real life.
Rebecca: Thank you. I was really looking forward to meet you guys, all.
Tetine: You’re like our artistic hero, so it’s so fun to have an opportunity to do this. Thank you, Jennifer for making it happen.
Jennifer: Wait, Tetine. How did you first find Rebecca? How did you first connect?
Tetine: Oh yeah, so I have it in my slides.
Jennifer: Oh, you do? Okay. Show me your slides.
Yeah, yeah yeah! As a team, this is kind of our first time all meeting live and I’m so excited that we’re all here together. Tetine, why don’t you start us off. Would you please introduce yourself and tell people a little bit about your research?
Tetine: Sure. Aloha. I’m Tetine Sentell. I’m a Professor here at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in Public Health. I’m the department chair of public health and I am one of the co-founders of the Public Health Resonance Project, which is a really exciting, interdisciplinary, collaborative synthesis of literature, engagement with literature, dissemination of literature project we’ve been doing now for several years that this team has assembled as part of, and I’m just been so grateful to be part of that. And it’s really about sharing opportunities for strength-based public health promotion, especially around culturally and regionally relevant physical activity and how that’s meaningful to people as individuals, as families, as communities, and as collectives.
Jennifer: What are some examples of those culturally relevant activities? Just so people have an idea.
Tetine: So in Hawaiʻi, some examples would be hula, spearfishing, outrigger canoe paddling, for instance. And then of course, in many other places there are resonance and activities from culturally relevant dance, folk dances, regional relevant dances, practices in the water, practices in the land.
Jennifer: Esme, would you introduce yourself?
Esme: Sure. My name is Esme Yokooji. I’m a Master’s of Public Health student at UH Mānoa, and I am the graduate research assistant on this project. I’m in the NHIH or Native Hawaiian and Indigenous Health specialty at UH. And, in my free time, I am someone who participates in these activities. I do Okinawan dance. I like to volunteer in ʻĀina doing things like Kalo planting and just conservation and restoration work in our natural habitats here in Hawaiʻi. That’s what initially drew me to this project is just the real life connection and seeing how community engages with these things. So mahalo for having us.
Jennifer: Rebecca, you are coming here from London. This is fun. London, Hawaiʻi, and I’m in San Diego. Rebecca, tell me a little about your journey as an artist.
Rebecca: Hi, my name is Sunnu Rebecca Choi. I’m an illustrator and printmaker based in London, but I’m originally from South Korea, lived in Canada and United States and now ended up in London somehow. And then I used to be a fashion designer in New York and Toronto, but then I decided to change my career, become an illustrator. Right now I’m specializing in editorial illustration as well as children’s book illustration, mostly focusing editorial illustration wise, mostly focusing on medical scientific as well as psychologies. And I work with a lot of different university magazines as well.
Jennifer: Thank you. So everyone listening knows, I did design the website [for the Public Health Resonance Project]. I had so much fun doing this project because there are so many visual elements to all of those activities and to the people who are engaging with them. This is about people.
Tetine: I am so happy to be here because we’ve been working on this international, collaborative project for so many years, and one of the things we really wanted to do was make it so beautiful and really make it so it could be disseminated and shared in ways that inspire and engage and delight people. And so I developed this logo as we began consolidating and thinking about disseminating in collaboration with some partners, and in particular with my husband and all who helped build it. So thank you, Craig. It was a meaningful logo. We felt it was really important. I have this slide here to really show we were inspired by the Hawaiian colors and the deep ocean from the shore to the sunset, and really thinking about the levels of influence and the social ecological model, which is our theoretical influence in the background from a public health perspective and thinking about the ripple effects and the waves that grow and build and move across. And really thinking about the place to connect the project and the connections and the links, the ripples, the reflections.
We had this endowed chair and this opportunity, and so I was really reflecting and thinking about this and this absolutely beautiful art came in my alumni magazine. Can you see how beautiful that is? It’s so pretty. I even have the one I pulled out of my alumni magazine and it was Rebecca’s artwork and it was so beautiful and it really had the feeling of what we were thinking about of these reflections, of these perspectives. You can see it has a lot of depth and story to the artwork as well as just being so peaceful and beautiful and meaningful. And so that’s how I found the artwork and had no idea how to engage with artwork or what to do in this particular way if it was contractable through a university through our funds. But anyway, just cold emailed through the link in the website and she has a beautiful website if you’ve seen it. And through that started a conversation that has just been really so fruitful and so exciting and just I’m so honored to be part of this. And in collaboration also with Esme and others who’ve really helped support and build the artwork into spaces that we can use it for all the things we wanted to do.
Jennifer: That is amazing. I’m so happy that we had a chance to hear that kind of origin story because I feel like there’s so many possibilities that we just don’t know exist as researchers, as academics, even as artists. What can we do to better connect and help shape our ideas together? Rebecca, how did you feel when Tetine first reached out? Is this a kind of project that you’ve done in the past?
Rebecca: No, actually it was really interesting because I haven’t really worked with other universities before. So was it, what university?
Tetine: Middlebury.
Rebecca: Yeah, Middlebury Magazine. That was my first alumni magazine that I worked with, university. And then when Tetine emailed me I was like, “Oh, I actually didn’t know it was released already.” That’s how I knew that magazine has been issued. Yeah, so that was really interesting. And then since then I’ve been working with a lot of universities in United States, so that opened a new opportunity for me as well.
Jennifer: And so I’m curious Tetine, what about art helps bring the community together? Why invest in this kind of visual element?
Tetine: Of course, art inspires us, engages us, pulls us in, makes us think, is important to us as humans, as people in the world. But I also think in academia we do a lot of intricate, thoughtful, engaged practices and activities that often are not accessible because they’re deep inside words and publications, sometimes even behind paywalls. And I think there is a lot of intricacy and story in even peer-reviewed academic journal papers, much less the smaller summaries of them. View open access resources from the PH Resonance Project.
And so it just felt like this was such an opportunity relative to the work, work now, to disseminate and to share it, to think about how it’s helpful, how it’s good for mental health, how it’s engaging, how it’s good for physical health, how it’s good for strength. All that was sort of built in the background of how to share out, this was so important to disseminate in communities and to people. And then with that joy, right. This is a strength-based activity. It’s a thing that brings people together, makes them happy, makes them joyful, connect with each other. And I think that’s one of the things art can do. It felt like such a nice synergy and such an amazing opportunity to really tie all those things together.
Jennifer: You brought up joy, and that’s something that I really get not just from the beautiful illustrations that have been customized to represent different activities that the project is researching, but also in the new version of the logo, in the thoughtfulness of how it all comes together through, you have created brochures, event flyers, like physical things and materials to help people engage in person. And that artwork also creates that same warmth and feeling online. Rebecca, I’m curious about your process working on what feels like something really representative of community. What was that process like for creating the artwork for this project?
Rebecca: The process-wise, whenever I receive a brief, I start with the research. Understanding how each activity is carried out, what equipment is used, and learning about the cultural context, from coding to landscapes. And that process helped me make the imagery as accurate and respectful as possible. Also, every time I create the illustration, my goal was to highlight public health at the community level, showcasing people coming together, whether it’s a mother and a child, a family, or a wider community group. I wanted the artwork to capture the moment and that sense of connection and shared care. I believe illustration has the power to bring people closer and help them resonate more deeply with the subject matter. And I think that was my main goal in creating those illustrations. Usually, when I’m working on the brief, I come up with three different concepts or ideas for each illustration.
Whenever, if I’m working on the canoe activity, I come up with three different composition or concept or focusing on something different for each illustration for the client to choose from. And that’s how I start creating the art. And then once we decide which concept we are going to go with and then I go render the illustration, my rendering process is quite interesting because I’m a printmaker as well. I create all the textures using printmaking techniques, either monoprinting, etching, or any kind of things that I can get hands on and I scan them in. And then in terms of the final illustration, I use Procreate on iPad and then bring all the textures together on iPad. So it’s a mix of digital and analog process.
Tetine: That’s why it’s so tactile. It’s like you can really feel it even through the internet. It’s really beautiful that way.
Esme: I felt the same way though. When I first saw the illustrations, I was like, “Oh, it’s almost like it’s painted on washi paper.” Like watercolor on washi. It’s so beautiful.
Rebecca: I will sometimes use the watercolor and washi or, accurate. So in my studio I have bunch of papers with all different kinds of textures and colors, which I can just use on any kind of illustration.
Esme: That’s so cool.
Tetine: It is. It’s so beautiful. I just love how it all works together and it really has such a feeling about it. Your work is so specifically you, but then you’re also using it so collaboratively to share other people’s vision, which is not an easy thing to do, I think as an artist, and I really appreciate the collaborativeness with which you’ve approached this, these. The first one as the initial one, as thinking about how to share and showcase what we were trying to do. And then very specifically in a regional context and an actual, it’s a specific way, it’s a specific bay you’re coming into and the landscape like you mentioned, and the practice and the movement and the arms, and then really thinking about who is in the canoe and what they’re wearing. And then as we have thought about it for the other resonating activities, to be willing and offer the opportunity for us to really be in collaborative conversation, even as the artwork is pretty far along to be like, “Oh no, we’ve gotten comments from our community members that this isn’t correct or we need to fix this.” I’m just so grateful for that.
Rebecca: Yeah, it was really, really interesting learning process for me as well because I knew about, briefly know about samba or Tongan, but I didn’t really specifically know about their clothing or how it works and how the body moves, things like that. So for me, it was a really, really good opportunity to learn about different activities as well.
Tetine: And I think that’s actually, exactly the project. In the sense that each one has not only resonance across, but these unique, very specific pieces of engagement, the land with the ocean with movements particular, with stories and songs and clothing from the community and care. And so the opportunity to showcase that and to showcase that very specifically about, in place for people doing it with each other as families and as communities, not specifically as, not as a show, but as a practice in community. And that has been really important. And as we share and tell the story of the artwork, that’s a really important piece of the, of our sharing of what you’ve been doing as well. Aloha.
Esme: I also want to say, Rebecca. I used to work in Heʻeia at the fish pond that kind of portrays that bay. And it was so funny because when we had the first kind of in-person activity, it actually took place in Heʻeia, but in the back of the valley. And it was so wonderful because when we showed the work to the people that are participating, they’re like, “Oh, that’s, Heʻeia, that’s here. They were able to instantly recognize from the art. And I think that, even people that weren’t affiliated with the project, were interested and curious. And I think the art was a big draw, seeing a place, recognizing it, feeling properly represented. So I just wanted to say thank you for that. That was so wonderful.
Rebecca: Yeah, also thank you for all the feedback that Tetine gives. Also, all our illustrations were reviewed by experts and that’s how we can actually get a correct imagery and then representative of the place as well.
Tetine: Yeah, and I’ll just say the funders of this, the endowed chair that I hold that has allowed this opportunity, it’s from a family enterprise and it’s all been in the background. I mentioned my husband helping with this. There’s a lot of family connections because Mele [Look], my beloved colleague who has done this project with me, certainly has helped connect to some of the cultural and regional experts, but in particular on the Heʻeia ridgeline, her husband Scott is a geologist, and he was like, “This ridge line is not correct. You have to go down. It happens like this, not like that.” And he drew a line for the ridge line so it was proper. That’s the level of detail and actually cultural consultation and regional consultation that’s been possible through this collaborative project.
Jennifer: It sounds like a lot of people were involved in the art making, and that’s something that’s probably really unexpected for folks who are listening to this. So it was the two of you as well as it sounds like experts?
Tetine: Yeah, yeah yeah. As Rebecca mentioned, we had the brief, we have a conversation, and then she would send three sort of options of things. And then those three options we would run by people who practice those activities, who work in the region, who engage in the practice. That certainly included my colleague Mele, who’s been part of this all along in every way, but also, exactly, people who paddle for the paddling one, people who participate in wild skating for the ones you’ll see in a minute we’ll talk about, and people who do samba, people who do Tongan dance. And so exactly this. So out of the three that we’ve chosen one to go with, and that one is really prioritized. Community, that it’s about being with family or being with others to do practices that bring people joy together, collaboratively in their real lives. That this is about, sometimes they are ceremonies at a wedding or at a party with a community, but they’re not about a show. They’re about a practice together in community.
And so that’s always been the background of the activities we’ve been showcasing. But then from those and from the one we’ve chosen, then she does a more developed artwork. And then from that more developed artwork, that’s where we really are like, okay, well this color or this clothes or this line or this is not how the arm would be, or this is not the exact proper direction of the canoe relative to the shoreline. That level of detail has been really important and part of the iterative conversation. And then we go back to consult and come back. So it’s a very iterative process.
Jennifer: When you started the project, did you know how long it would take to produce art using all of this feedback?
Tetine: For me, that is kind of how the process of most of the work that I do works, where there’s a lot of, we work a lot with community and in practice and public health is about that. I would say for me, not a surprise, but I did feel really bad for Rebecca. I felt it was a lot to ask the artist to engage in sort of the academic consultation process at that level of detail. But she was a really good sport about it.
Rebecca: It was very interesting because I also, I do longer projects or shorter projects. Usually the book projects are very long. Sometimes it lasts from three months minimum to one year or more than one year. But then editorial projects usually ends within two weeks. I think this project was in between, I guess.
Jennifer: I appreciate that. And for folks who are listening, if you’re considering working with an artist asking about their timeline, but also considering who you need to bring into the conversation for that art is helpful upfront so that you can talk about it together.
Tetine: Could I just add to that exact thing, which is that because of this project being so specific about culture and place and about those practices, it was vital and we couldn’t have done it otherwise. Because if the artwork for the practice doesn’t make sense to the people participating, we shouldn’t do that artwork at all, right? And so that was built into this. I could imagine other scenarios where you wouldn’t need quite such level of detail because maybe you’d be talking about just a feeling or something to connect with this, but this was so vital that we have that level of detail
Jennifer: Esme, as someone who is using the art to create flyers and other kinds of, I would say marketing materials, but is it marketing materials?
Esme: Well, I would say my background is also in organizing, and that was where I had most of my social media, video editing experiences actually in making, for lack of a better word, propaganda. But kind of trying to inculcate people and inform them, somewhat a combination of educational materials. And I think the goal of this project is, Tetine spoke on, is just to shine a light and a spotlight on these different activities, on these different researchers, on the work that they’re doing and its value. I think for me, what I’ve really enjoyed about being a part of this team is how much Tetine specifically stresses the importance of cultural competence and humility. And I think that understanding how specific everything is, understanding how tailored it is, really conceptualizing who our audience is, who’s going to be benefited by our materials, is something that’s really important to me, specifically being in Native Hawaiian and Indigenous Health. Because I think having more culturally tailored interventions or even having more culturally tailored messaging, having artwork that is accurate that people can recognize, that immediately draws them in I think is really valuable and important. It’s been truly really fun, honestly, to make materials and just experiment with the different kinds of things, whether it’s making a video intro or editing a logo for a flyer or collaborating on a poster or any manner of things. It’s been a joy.
Jennifer: Tetine, what would you like folks to know about, okay, there’s so many people out there who are like, “I do want a website. I do want to have beautiful artwork for my events. I do want these things, but I don’t know if it’s worth my time as the PI [Principal Investigator].” You are the decision maker here. And so I’m curious, what made you know that this was worth it for you in terms of your energy?
Tetine: Yeah, I mean, I think it is a conundrum of academic practice these days actually. This how we engage in the PR of the work we do in a sort of dissemination campaign. Generally, people do so much valuable work that they don’t [promote] because of their own demands of academia. They don’t have the time, capacity, support system to help be sharing that out. I guess I would advocate not for this to be something that individuals need to do only because it isn’t something an individual can do only. I was able to pull this together by the amazing collaboration, by being fortunate to have, hold this endowed chair and being senior enough in my own career that the publication process or grant making process was not the only thing I really needed to prioritize relative to my own goals of my academic, what I wanted to do with my career.
And so it has been actually a joy and an honor to be part of this collaboration, to keep building it, to keep growing it, to engage in sharing it out. Like as Esme is saying and dissemination materials might be one of the terms I might want to use for some of the things we’re doing to think about how we’re sharing out and why. What we want to do is think about how to build in the opportunity for innovative ways in which we showcase the work we do in academia and in art being one of the fundamental ways in which we can share out. And then the art being collateral, like Esme is mentioning and we’ve talked about. And that, Jennifer, is one of the great skills that you hold is how we share out the beautiful work that an artist achieves in collaboration with us, like Rebecca is doing. Then in YouTube and LinkedIn, or in community, and handouts and flyers. How do we do that? That’s certainly not something we learn in graduate school, but in the background is all this important work that deserves to be showcased.
Jennifer: Ah, wonderful. Are there slides that you did not share that you want to be sure to get into the video? Is there anything else that we should be sure to talk about today?
Esme: Only that I think from what I’ve experienced, because a lot of what I do specifically focuses on Indigenous Health and what did this Project was specifically trying to reach and elevate and focus on communities that have historically been marginalized, experienced disparity. But coming from the perspective of how is culture a source of strength, how is connectivity to land and to heritage a source of strength? And I think that using art is something that reinforces that message because a lot of times Indigenous Arts and Traditions, whether it’s storytelling or even hula, is considered an art form as well as a physical activity has been marginalized. So using art as a means to tell these stories and amplify these messages feels so right and is a source of resonance for me anyway. And engaging in this work.
Rebecca: So much of this project, the process was about discovery for me as well. Through this collaboration, I learned so much about the diverse cultural backgrounds behind each brief. And also me as a Korean Canadian based in London, I have so much different cultural diversity within me as well. So it was really valuable experience for me to work on those illustrations and artistically it also encouraged me to explore new colors and compositions that I never used before as well. So finding ways to express not just the activities itself, but the joy and vitality that shines through them while highlighting the connection between people, community and nature, was really, really enjoyable working on this brief.
Jennifer: Well, I’m very excited for the art to come. I’ve never had such beautiful art packaged, ready for me to consider for a website design. I felt really honored to be able to work with the thoughtfulness that I could tell everyone who was involved with this project put into the creation of these art pieces. And there’s new ones that I guess they’re maybe going to be premiered on this video if they’re not on the website first, and I’m very excited to share them with all of you. So Tetine, let’s do your slides.
Tetine: This was the beautiful artwork we talked about before that I was inspired by. And then this is exactly like, to showcase both the artwork itself and then the artwork, the initial one we’ve been talking about so much, the one, the paddling, the outrigger canoe paddling one, you can see the family, you can see Heʻeia in the background. And then you can also see how we used the artwork as a piece of the story we were telling, which was that we were doing various gatherings over the world, essentially, last year. And that we were thinking about, this was something, we had note cards, we had a poster, we had small business card size handouts to really share and tell the story about what we were doing. So the new artwork includes resonances specifically with this one. This is based in Hawaiʻi and our community here. And then we wanted to really think about how this resonated in other places.
So this is wild skating in Scandinavian lands. And we had feedback, for instance, specifically here in this one about the trees that actually from our Swedish colleagues said no one would ever go out without a helmet. And so we put a helmet on the child because we were like, that makes sense. That’s the cultural practice. Same with the backpack and the way she’s holding her poles. That the backpack, they were like, we’d never go out into the wilderness without some sort of backpack or something to be safe. So again, really thinking about how communities engage in these practices in real life versus what you might see on a tourist brochure. That was really important to us. Again, you can see the mom and her child. And then really, dance is a really important culturally and regionally relevant community, relevant practice, again, all over the world.
And so dance, a lot of the research is in dance specifically for so many different pieces of staving off dementia, Parkinson’s, community wellness, mental health. And so here we have our Tongan dance example we talked about earlier, and the samba dance example with input, in collaboration from colleagues from Tonga and Brazil, specifically talking about what this might look like in practice and what this might be like. And so for instance, in the samba one, at first we had these very elaborate headdresses and activities and our colleagues said, well, certainly we do that in Carnival and something, but that’s not what you would see in a community. That’s a special event for a different type of piece. And so if you want to think about how people would do these practices in real life, in community, it would be more casual like this. And same, we talked a lot about in the Tongan example about the clothes, what that might look like, how people would be engaged, what would be respectful, what would be expected, that this is a bit of a dressy event, but also a family event and what that might look like and how the arms are, the stories being told with the hands and the arms and the motions and what music would be relevant.
You can see in the background a lot of those conversations. The last thing I just wanted to highlight is, as we talked about earlier, we have different logos to go with each one. Because the resonance is across, and the first one really started with the Hawaiian sunset and colors. And then you can see these colors in the background are from some of these other places as well. So highlighting that resonance across that, we really want to think about the colors and the schemes, in terms of people’s communities and specific places. Which is to share, we really talked about this, and I know I think Jennifer, you have an example, but just how we’ve been able to engage in our own activities and practices using this artwork because of Esme’s skillset as well. And because of the capacities and the conversations, including with you, Jennifer, and the website. How to share out and showcase the conversations we’ve had with so many wonderful experts across the globe. And this really is just such a tremendously collaborative project. And so that’s really been a great joy of this project as well, is how to all the strengths and experiences and skillsets that people bring to the table together, really thinking about where we showcase that and how to do that in the most beautiful, respectful, exciting, engaging way possible.
Jennifer: Yay. Thank you so much for recording this with me. I feel like you were all so excited to talk that it really is going to make for an engaging episode for people, and I really hope that it inspires other folks to consider collaborating with an artist or even reaching out to Rebecca because you’re such a valuable resource for people. I love how much attention that you give to not just what needs to be communicated, but who it’s communicating with and who needs to be involved in the process. It’s just beautiful. Thank you all for being here today. Yeah. Anything else before we wrap up?
Tetine: No, but thank you, Jennifer. You’re a great visual communicator also, and I’m just really grateful for all the expertise you’ve brought to the story of the Public Health Resonance Project and the capacity to share it out as well. Those are skillsets I didn’t have and didn’t have access to either, and really have been grateful for that as well. Just thank you and again, for bringing us all together for this great opportunity. This is a great joy. It’s been a great joy to meet and a great joy to meet Rebecca, to have Esme here, who’s just been a joy as well. And Jennifer, thank you for all that you do for us as well. You also are a great joy!
A special thank you to my husband, Dr. Matthew M. Pincus, for his editing and storytelling support with this episode. If you need help with a video, reach out to him at [email protected]
We recently embarked upon a project to explore the development of higher education research topics over the last decades. The results were published in Review of Education. Our aim was to thematically map the field of research on higher education and to analyse how the field has evolved over time between 2000 and 2021. This blog post summarises our findings and reflects on the implications for HE research.
HE research continues to grow. HE researchers are located in globally diverse geographical locations and publish on diversifying topics. Studies focusing on the development of HE with a global-level analysis are increasingly emerging. However, most of these studies are limited to scientometric network analyses that do not include a content-related focus. In addition, they are deductive, indicating that they tried to fit their new findings into existing categories. Recently, Daenekindt and Huisman (2020) were able to capture the scholarly literature on higher education through an analysis of latent themes by utilising topic modelling. This approach got attention in the literature, and the study’s contribution was highlighted in an earlier SRHE blog post. We also found their study useful and built on it in our novel analysis. However, their analysis focused only on generating topics from a wide range of higher education journals and did not identify explanatory factors, such as change over the years or the location of publication. After identifying this gap, we worked towards moving one step further.
A central contribution of our study is the inclusion of a set of research content explanatory factors, namely: time, region, funding, collaboration type, and journals, to investigate the topics of HE research. In methodological terms, our study moves ahead of the description of the topic prevalence to the explanation of the prevalence utilizing structural topic modelling (Roberts et al, 2013).
Structural topic modelling is a machine learning technique that examines the content of provided text to learn patterns in word usage without human supervision in a replicable and transparent way (Mohr & Bogdanov, 2013). This powerful technique expands the methodological repertoire of higher education research. On one hand, computational methods make it possible to extract meaning from large datasets; on the other, they allow the prediction of emerging topics by integrating the strengths of both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Nevertheless, many scholars in HE remain reluctant to engage with such methods, reflecting a degree of methodological conservatism or tunnel vision (see Huisman and Daenekindt’s SRHE blog post).
In this blog post, our intention is not to go deep into the minute details of this methodological technique, but to share a glimpse of our main findings through the use of such a technique. With the corpus of all papers published between 2000 and 2021 in the top six generalist journals of higher education, as listed by Cantwell et al (2022) and Kwiek (2021) both, we analysed a dataset of 6,562 papers. As a result, we identified 15 emergent research topics and several major patterns that highlight the thematic changes over the last decades. Below, we share some of our findings, accompanied by relevant visualisations.
Glimpse at the main findings with relevant visuals
The emergent 15 higher education topics and three visibly rising ones
Our topic modelling analysis revealed 15 distinct topics, which are largely in line with the topics discussed in previous studies on this line (eg Teichler, 1996; Tight, 2003; Horta & Jung, 2014). However, there are added nuances in our analysis. For example, the most prevalent topics are policy and teaching/learning, which are widely acknowledged in the field, but new themes have emerged and strengthened over time. These themes include identity politics and discrimination, access, and employability. These areas, conceptually linked to social justice, have become central to higher education research, especially in US-based journals but not limited to them. The visual below demonstrates the changes over the years for all 15 topics.
The Influence of funding on higher education research topics
Research funding plays a crucial role in shaping certain topics, particularly gender inequality, access, and doctoral education. Studies that received funding exhibited a higher prevalence of these socially significant topics, underscoring the importance of targeted funding to support research with social impact. The data visualisation below summarises the influence of reported funding for each topic. The novelty of this pattern needs to be highlighted because we have not come across a previous study looking into the influence of funding existence on research topics in the higher education field.
The impact of collaboration on higher education research topics
Collaborative publications are more prevalent in topics such as teaching and learning, and diversity and social relations. By contrast, theoretical discussions, identity politics, policy, employability, and institutional management are more common in solo-authored papers. This pattern aligns with the nature of these topics and the data requirements for research. Please see the visualised data below.
We highlight that although the relationship between collaboration and citation impact or researcher productivity is well studied, we are not aware of any evidence of the effect of collaboration patterns on topic prevalence, particularly in studies focusing on higher education. So, this finding is a novel contribution to higher education research.
Higher education journals’ topic preferences
Although the six leading journals claim to be generalist, our analysis shows they have differing publication preferences. For example, Higher Education focuses on policy and university governance, while Higher Education Research and Development stands out for teaching/learning and indigenous knowledge. Journal of Higher Education and Review of Higher Education, two US-based journals, have the highest prevalence of identity politics and discrimination topics. Last, Studies in Higher Education has a significantly higher prevalence in teaching and learning, theoretical discussions, doctoral education, and emotions, burnout and coping than most of the journals.
Regional differences in higher education research topics
Topic focus varies significantly by the region of the first author. First, studies from Asia exhibit the highest prevalence of academic work and institutional management. Studies from Africa show a higher prevalence of identity politics and discrimination. Moreover, studies published by first authors from Eastern European countries stand out with the higher prevalence of employability. Lastly, the policy topic has a high prevalence across all regions. However, studies with first authors from Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean showed a higher prevalence of policy research in higher education than those from North America and Western Europe. By contrast, indigenous knowledge is most prominent in Western Europe (including Australia and New Zealand). The figure below demonstrates these in visual format.
Concluding remarks
Higher education research has grown and diversified dramatically over the past two decades. The field is now established globally, with an ever-expanding array of topics and contributors. In this blog post, we shared the results of our analysis in relation to the influence of targeted funding, collaborative practices, regional differences, and journal preferences on higher education research topics. We have also indicated that certain topics have risen in prevalence in the last two decades. More patterns are included in the main research study published in Review of Education.
It is important to note that we could only include the higher education papers published up to 2021, the latest available data year when we started the analyses. The impact of generative artificial intelligence and recent major shifts in the global geopolitics, including the new DEI policies in the US and overall securitisation of science tendencies, may not be reflected fully in this dataset. These themes are very recent, and future studies, including replications with similar approaches, may help provide newly emerging patterns.
Dr Yusuf Oldac is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Education Policy and Leadership at The Education University of Hong Kong. He holds a PhD degree from the University of Oxford, where he received a full scholarship. Dr Oldac’s research spans international and comparative higher education, with a current focus on global science and knowledge production in university settings.
Dr Francisco Olivas obtained his PhD in Sociology from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He joined Lingnan University in August 2021. His research lies in the intersections between cultural sociology, social stratification, and subjective well-being, using quantitative and computational methods.
At first glance Liz Kendall may look like an odd choice for Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology. She has never worked in science, she has rarely mentioned science directly in any intervention in her entire parliamentary career, and this is not a role with the kind of profile which will allow easy entry in any future leadership race.
Although covering a related brief has never been a disqualifying quality for any predecessors, her move from the Department for Work and Pensions following her failed welfare reforms felt more like a hasty exit than a tactical manoeuvre.
Her direct predecessor, Peter Kyle, often seemed more preoccupied with turning the UK into an “AI superpower” than he did the more tedious business of how the research ecosystem is governed and how it can be manipulated to fulfil the government’s ambitions. In truth, the business of research reform is not about more grand visions, frameworks, or strategies, but the rather grubbier work of deciding where to spend a finite amount of funding on an infinite amount of programmes.
The premise of her speech was that the growth of the UK economy is reliant on making the most of the UK’s R&D strengths. To get the most out of the UK’s R&D strengths Kendall believes the government can neither be too directive and must allow curiosity-driven research to prosper. It should also not be too permissive, funding must be directed toward government priorities particularly when it comes to translation and application.
The labelling of existing funds in new ways is in itself not a strategy for economic growth. Clearly, doing the same thing, with the same people, in the same ways, would lead to exactly the same outcomes with a different name. A bit like when international research became about making the UK a “science superpower” or when every ambitious research programme was a “moonshot” or relabelling every economic benefit produced through research as “levelling up”.
The boldest ambition of Kendall’s speech is perhaps the most understated. Kendall is committed to “doing fewer things better.” In a speech delivered at the same event by UKRI’s Chief Executive, Ian Chapman, this simple sentiment may have massive consequences.
Chapman’s view is that the UK lacks any of the natural resources advantages of its major international competitors. Instead, the UK maintains its competitiveness through the smart use of its knowledge assets even if he believes these are “undervalued and underappreciated.”
Chapman’s UKRI will be more interventionist. He will maintain curiosity driven research but warns that UKRI will not support the activities where it has no “right to win significant market-share in that sector,” and in backing spin-outs UKRI will be “much more selective.” The future being etched out here is one where there is much greater direction by government and UKRI toward funding that aligns with the industrial strategy and its mission for economic growth while maintaining a broad research base through curiosity driven research. Clearly, funding fewer programmes more generously means that some areas of research will receive less government funding.
The government’s approach to research is coalescing around its approach to governing more broadly. Like the industrial strategy the government is not picking winners as such but creating the conditions through which some desirable policy outcomes like economic growth have a better chance of emerging. It’s a mix of directing funding toward areas where the UK may secure an advantage like the doubling of R&D investment in critical technologies, addressing market failures through measures like the £4.5m for Women in Innovation Awards, and regulating to shape the market with the emphasis of economic growth and sustainability in UKRI’s new framework document.
Football’s coming home
In her speech Kendall likened the selective funding approaches to the selective sports funding of the Olympics. Alighting on a different sporting metaphor Chapman recalled the time a non-specific European team he supports (almost definitely Liverpool) came back from 3-0 down to win the European Cup as a reminder that through collective support researchers can achieve great things.
Perhaps, UK research has been more like the England men’s football team than it has the current Premier League champions. The right pieces in the wrong places with little sense of how the talent of individuals contribute to the success of the whole. In committing to funding fewer programmes better the government wants all its stars on the pitch in top condition. The challenge is that those who go from some funding to none are likely to feel their contributions to the team’s success have been overlooked
The higher education sector is focussing too much on inward-facing debates on research culture and are missing out on a major opportunity to expose our culture to the public as a way to truly connect research with society.
REF can underpin this outward turn, providing mechanisms not only for incentivising good culture, but for opening up conversations about who we are and how we work to contribute to society.
This outward turn matters. Research and Development (R&D) delivers enormous economic and societal value, yet universities struggle to earn public trust or support for what they do. Recent nation-wide public opinion research by Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) has shown that while 88 per cent of people say it is important for the Government to invest in R&D, just 18 per cent can immediately think of lots of ways R&D benefits them and their family. When talking about R&D in public focus groups, universities were rarely front of mind and are primarily seen as education institutions where students or lecturers might do R&D as an ancillary activity.
If the university sector is to sustain legitimacy – and by extension, the political and financial foundations of UK research – we must find new ways to make our work visible, relatable, and trusted. Focusing on the culture that shapes how research is done may be the most powerful way to do this.
Why culture matters
Public opinion is not background noise. Public awareness, appetite and trust all shape political choices about funding, regulation, and the role of universities in national life. While CaSE’s work shows that 72 per cent of people trust universities to be honest about how much the UK government should invest in R&D, the lack of awareness about what universities do and how they do it leaves legitimacy fragile.
This fragility is starkly illustrated by recent polling from More in Common: when asked which government budgets they would most like to see cut, the public didn’t want funding cuts for R&D, yet placed universities third on the list for budgets that they would be happy to be cut (alongside foreign aid and funding for the arts).
Current approaches to improving public opinions about research in our sector have had limited success. The sector’s instinct has been to showcase outputs – discoveries, patents, and impact case studies – to boost public awareness and build support for research in universities. But CaSE polling evidence suggests that this approach isn’t cutting through: 74 per cent of the public said they knew nothing or hardly anything about R&D in their area. This lack of connection does not indicate a lack of interest: a similar proportion (70 per cent) would like to hear more about local R&D.
Transparency
Evidence from other sectors shows that opening up processes builds trust. In healthcare, for example, the NHS has found that when patients are meaningfully involved in decisions about their care and how services are designed, trust and satisfaction increase – not just because of outcomes, but because people can see and influence how decisions are made.
Research from business and engineering contexts shows that people are more likely to trust companies that are open about how they operate, not just what they deliver. Together, these lessons reinforce that we should not rely on showcasing outputs alone: legitimacy comes from making visible the processes, people and cultures that underpin research.
Universities don’t just generate knowledge; they develop the individuals who carry skills and values into the wider economy. Researchers, technicians, professional services staff and others who enable research in higher education bring curiosity, collaboration and critical thinking into every sector, both through direct collaboration and when they move beyond academia. These skills fuel innovation and problem-solving across the economy and public services, but they can only develop and thrive in supportive, inclusive research cultures. Without attention to culture, the talent pipeline that government and industry rely on is put at risk.
Research culture makes these processes and people visible. Culture is about how research is done: the integrity of methods, the openness of data, the inclusivity of teams, the collaborations – including with the public – that make discoveries possible. These are the very things the public are keen to understand better. By opening up the black box of research and showing the culture that underpins it, we can make university research more relatable, trustworthy, and visible in everyday life.
The role of REF in shifting the conversation
The expansion of the old Environment element of REF to encompass broader aspects of research culture offers an opportunity to help shift from an inward to a more outward looking narrative and public conversation. The visibility and accountability that REF submissions require matters beyond academia: it gives the sector a platform to showcase the values and processes that underpin research. In doing so, REF can help our sector build trust and legitimacy by making research culture part of the national conversation about R&D.
Openness, integrity, inclusivity, and collaboration – core components of research culture – are values which the public already recognise and expect. By framing research culture as part of the story we tell – explaining not just what our universities produce but how they produce it – we can build a stronger connection with the public. Culture is the bridge between the abstract notion of investing in R&D and a lived understanding of what universities actually do in society.
Public support for research is strong, but support for universities is increasingly fragile. Whatever the REF looks like when we unpause, we need to avoid retreating to ‘business as usual’ and closing down this opportunity to open up a more meaningful conversation about the role universities play in UK R&D and in the progress of society.
Last year, FIRE launched the Free Speech Dispatch, a regular series covering new and continuing censorship trends and challenges around the world. Our goal is to help readers better understand the global context of free expression. Want to make sure you don’t miss an update? Sign up for our newsletter.
Yet another university erodes academic freedom to appease Beijing
In August, I released Authoritarians in the Academy, my book about the relationship between higher education, authoritarian regimes, and the censorship that internationalization has introduced into colleges and universities. And this month, an investigation released by The Guardian provided a perfect example of how this influence and censorship play out, in this case in the UK.
Earlier this year, Sheffield Hallam University told professor Laura Murphy, whose work the university had previously touted, to abandon her research into Uyghurs and rights abuses in China. The ban ultimately lasted for eight months until the school reversed course and issued an apology in October after Murphy threatened legal action. The Guardianreports that “the instruction for Murphy to halt her research came six months after the university decided to abandon a planned report on the risk of Uyghur forced labour in the critical minerals supply chain.”
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There are multiple alleged reasons for the university’s decision to disavow research critical of the CCP, but they all boil down to fear of legal or financial retaliation from the same government at the center of academics’ investigations. Murphy suggested that Sheffield Hallam was “explicitly trading my academic freedom for access to the Chinese student market.” And this is a real challenge among university administrations today: fear that vindictive governments will punish noncompliant universities by cutting off their access to lucrative international student tuition.
Another likely reason was a warning from Sheffield Hallam’s insurance provider that it would no longer cover work produced by the university’s Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice after a defamation suit from a company named in its research. The HKC has raised the ire of Chinese government officials before, leading to a block of Sheffield Hallam’s websites behind the Great Firewall. Regarding the ill will between CCP officials and the HKC, a university administrator wrote that “attempting to retain the business in China and publication of the [HKC] research are now untenable bedfellows” and complained of the negative effects on recruitment in the country, which looks to have suffered.
Most disturbing was a visit Chinese state security officials conducted in 2024 to the university’s Beijing office, where they questioned employees about the HKC’s research and the “message to cease the research activity was made clear.” An administrator said that “immediately, relations improved” when the university informed officials the research into human rights abuses would be dropped.
The university’s apology and reversal may not spell the end of the story. A South Yorkshire Police spokesperson suggested that, because of potential engagement with security officials in China, Sheffield Hallam may face investigation under the National Security Act related to a provision on “assisting a foreign intelligence service.”
NYC indie film festival falls victim to transnational repression
One of the most common misconceptions about free expression today is that nations with better speech protections are immune from the censorship in less free countries. Case in point: New Yorkers hoping to attend the IndieChina Film Festival, set to begin on Nov. 8, could not do so because of repression in China.
Organizer Zhu Rikun said relentless pressure necessitated the cancellation of the event, with film directors in and outside China telling him en masse that they could not attend or requesting their films not be shown. Human Rights Watch also reports that Chinese artist Chiang Seeta warned that “nearly all participating directors in China faced intimidation” and even those abroad “reported that their relatives and friends in China were receiving threatening calls from police.”
Zhu, whose parents and friends in China are reportedly facing harassment as well, thought it would “be better” after moving to the U.S. “It turns out I was wrong,” he said.
Worrying UN cybercrime treaty nets dozens of signatures, with a notable exception
Late last month, 72 nations including France, Qatar, and China signed a treaty purportedly intended to fight “cybercrime,” but that leaves the door open for authoritarian nations to use it to enlist other nations — free and unfree — in their campaign to punish political expression on the internet. As I explained last year as the proposal went to the General Assembly, among other problems, the treaty fails to sufficiently define a “serious” crime taking place on computer networks other than that it’s punishable by a four-year prison sentence or more.
You might see the immediate problem here: Many nations, including some who ultimately signed on to the treaty, regularly punish online expression with long prison terms. A single TikTok video or an X post that offends or insults government officials, monarchs, or religious bodies can land people around the world in prison — sometimes for decades.
Despite earlier statements of support from a representative for the United States on the Ad Hoc Committee on Cybercrime, the U.S. ultimately did not sign the treaty and “is unlikely to sign or ratify unless and until we see implementation of meaningful human rights and other legal protections by the convention’s signatories.”
That’s not all. There’s plenty more news about speech, tech, and the internet:
New amendments to Kenya’s Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act are worrying activists in the country, including one that grants the National Computer and Cybercrimes Coordination Committee authority to block material that “promotes illegal activities” or “extreme religious and cultic practices.”
Influencers, beware: the Cyberspace Administration of China released new regulations requiring social media users publishing material on “sensitive” topics like law and medicine to prove their qualifications to do so. Platforms will also be required to assist in verifying those qualifications.
The much-maligned Online Safety Act continues to create new concerns for free expression in the UK. TechRadar reports that regulatory body OfCom is “using an unnamed third-party tool to monitor VPN use,” one likely employing AI capabilities. VPN use is, to no surprise, spiking in the UK in response to mandated age-checks under the online safety regulations.
Brazil is employing a new AI-powered online speech monitor to collect material from social media and blogs that can be used for prosecution of hate speech offenders in the country. Hate speech convictions can result in serious punishment in Brazil, like the one levied against a comedian sentenced to over eight years for offensive jokes this year.
The European Union Council’s “Chat Control” proposal to scan online communications and files for CSAM appears to be moving forward. The latest proposal removes the obligation for service providers to scan all material but encourages it to be done voluntarily. However, the text of the proposal allows for a “mitigation measure” requiring providers deemed high risk to take “all appropriate risk mitigation measures.”
Apple and Android removed gay dating apps from their app stores in China after “an order from the Cyberspace Administration of China.” A spokesperson for Apple said, “We follow the laws in the countries where we operate.”
India has somewhat narrowed the scope of its vast internet takedown machine, limiting the authority of those who can demand platforms block material to officials who reach a certain rank of power. Those ordering removals will now also be required to “clearly specify the legal basis and statutory provision invoked” and “the nature of the unlawful act.”
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah of the Indian state Karnataka is threatening a new law against misinformation that will punish those “giving false information to people, and disturbing communal harmony.”
Swiss man Emanuel Brünisholz will spend ten days in prison next month after choosing not to pay a 600 Swiss francs fine from his incitement to hatred conviction. Brünisholz’s offense was this 2022 Facebook comment: “If you dig up LGBTQI people after 200 years, you’ll only find men and women based on their skeletons. Everything else is a mental illness promoted through the curriculum.”
A Spanish court acquitted a Catholic priest of hate speech charges after a yearslong investigation into his online criticisms of Islam, including a 2016 article, “The Impossible Dialogue with Islam.”
Russian censorship laws should not dictate expression in the NHL
NHL teams have decided to entirely abandon Pride warm up jerseys from their programming out of fear of retaliation against their Russian players.
Continuing its widespread censorship of what it deems “gay propaganda” or “extremist” material, Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor banned the world’s largest anime database last month. Roskomnadzor blamed the block on MyAnimeList’s content “containing information propagating non-traditional sexual relations and/or preference.”
Singapore plans to roll out a new online safety commission with authority to order platforms to block posts and ban users and to demand internet service providers censor material as well. Initially, it intends to address harms like stalking but will eventually also target “the incitement of enmity.”
South Sudan’s National Security Service released comedian Amath Jok after four days in detainment for insulting President Salva Kiir on TikTok, who she called “a big thief wearing a hat.” But Jok isn’t out of the woods yet. Authorities have indefinitely banned her from using social media.
South Korea seeks to punish expression targeting other nations
In response to controversial protests against China, a Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker is pushing for legislation to punish those who “defame or insult” countries and their residents or ethnic groups. The bill would punish false information with fines and prison terms up to five years, and “insulting” speech with up to a year.
That effort garnered support this month when President Lee Jae Myung said that “hate speech targeting specific groups is being spread indiscriminately, and false and manipulated information is flooding” social media. He called it “criminal behavior” beyond the bounds of free expression.
Media censorship from Israel to Kyrgyzstan to Tunisia
The BBC has apologized to President Trump over “the manner” in which a clip of his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, was edited to give “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action,” but notes that its UK-aired “Trump: A Second Chance?” program was not defamatory. It remains unclear whether Trump will still follow through on his threat to file a suit against the British outlet, but in earlier comments he claimed to have an “obligation” to do so.
By a vote of 50 to 41, Israel’s Knesset passed the first of three steps in the approval of the Law to Prevent Harm to State Security by a Foreign Broadcasting Authority, which would give authorities permanent power to shut down and seize foreign media they deem “harmful” without needing judicial review or approval.
A BBC journalist and Vietnamese citizen who returned home to renew their passport has not been allowed to leave the country for months. The journalist was reportedly held by police for questioning about their journalism.
Thai activist Nutthanit Duangmusit was sentenced to two years for lèse majesté for her part in conducting a 2022 opinion poll to “gauge public opinion about whether they agree with the King being allowed to exercise his authority as he wishes.”
A Kyrgyz court’s ruling declared two investigative media outlets as “extremist,” banned them from publishing, and made distribution of their work illegal.
Investigative outlet Nawaat received a disturbing surprise from Tunisian authorities on Oct. 31: a notice slipped under their office door without even a knock, warning them to suspend all activities for a month.
Tanzanian police warn against words or images causing “distress”
In response to protests over President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s reelection, Tanzanian authorities issued a disturbing warning to the country: text messages or online posts could have serious consequences. The mass text sent to Tanzanian residents warned, “Avoid sharing images or videos that cause distress or degrade someone’s dignity. Doing so is a criminal offense and, if found, strict legal action will be taken.”
Hundreds have indeed been charged with treason, including one woman whose offense was recommending that protesters buy gas masks for protection at demonstrations.
Masih Alinejad’s would-be killers sentenced to 25 years in prison
In 2022, journalist and women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad was the target of an Iran-coordinated assassination plot that culminated in a hit man arriving outside her New York home with an AK-47. Late last month, two men were sentenced for their involvement in the attempt. The men, Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, were handed 25 years each in a Manhattan federal court. Regarding the verdict, Alinejad said: “I love justice.”
Ailing novelist granted pardon from Algerian president
Some parting good news: Boualem Sansal, an 81-year-old French-Algerian novelist who is suffering from cancer, has been granted a presidential pardon after serving one year of a five year sentence. Sansal was arrested late last year and convicted of undermining national unity and insulting public institutions. His humanitarian pardon from Algerian president Abdelmadjid Tebboune comes after months of advocacy from European leaders.
I still remember walking into my first Association of Media Practice Educators conference, sometime around the turn of the millennium.
I was a very junior academic, wide-eyed and slightly overwhelmed. Until that point, I’d assumed research lived only in books and journals.
My degree had trained me to write about creative work, not to make it.
That event was a revelation. Here were filmmakers, designers, artists, and teachers talking about the doing as research – not as illustration or reflection, but as knowledge in its own right. There was a sense of solidarity, even mischief, in the air. We were building something together: a new language for what universities could call research.
When AMPE eventually merged with MeCCSA – the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association – some of us worried that the fragile culture of practice would be swallowed by traditional academic habits. I remember standing in a crowded coffee queue at that first joint conference, wondering aloud whether practice would survive.
It did. But it’s taken twenty-five years to get here.
From justification to circulation
In the early days, the fight was about legitimacy. We were learning to write short contextual statements that translated installations, performances, and films into assessable outputs. The real gatekeeper was always the Research Excellence Framework. Creative practice researchers learned to speak REF – to evidence, contextualise, and theorise the mess of creative making.
Now that argument is largely won. REF 2021 explicitly recognised practice research. Most universities have templates, repositories, and internal mentors to support it. There are still a few sceptics muttering about rigour, but they’re the exception, not the rule.
If creative practice makes knowledge, the challenge today is not justification. It’s circulation.
Creative practice is inherently cross-disciplinary. It doesn’t sit neatly in the subject silos that shape our academic infrastructure. Each university has built its own version of a practice research framework – its own forms, repositories, and metadata – but the systems don’t talk to one another. Knowledge that begins in the studio too often ends up locked inside an institutional database, invisible to the rest of the world.
A decade of blueprints
Over the past few years, a string of national projects has tried to fix that.
PRAG-UK, funded by Research England in 2021, mapped the field and called for a national repository, metadata standards, and a permanent advisory body. It was an ambitious vision that recognised practice research as mature and ready to stand alongside other forms of knowledge production.
Next came Practice Research Voices and SPARKLE in 2023 – both AHRC-funded, both community-driven. PR Voices, led by the University of Westminster, tested a prototype repository built on the Cayuse platform. It introduced the idea of the practice research portfolio – a living collection that links artefacts, documentation, and narrative. SPARKLE, based at Leeds with the British Library and EDINA, developed a technical roadmap for a national infrastructure, outlining how such a system might actually work.
And now we have ENACT – the Practice Research Data Service, funded through UKRI’s Digital Research Infrastructure programme and again led by Westminster. ENACT’s job is to turn all those reports into something real: a national, interoperable, open data service that makes creative research findable, accessible, and reusable. For the first time, practice research is being treated as part of the UK’s research infrastructure, not a quirky sideshow to it.
A glimpse of community
In June 2025, Manchester Metropolitan University hosted The Future of Practice Research. For once, everyone was in the same room – the PRAG-UK authors, the SPARKLE developers, the ENACT team, funders, librarians, and plenty of curious researchers. We swapped notes, compared schemas, and argued cheerfully about persistent identifiers.
It felt significant – a moment of coherence after years of fragmentation. For a day, it felt like we might actually build a network that could connect all these efforts.
A few weeks later, I found myself giving a talk for Loughborough University’s Capturing Creativity webinar series. Preparing for that presentation meant gathering up a decade of my own work on creative practice research – the workshops I’ve designed, the projects I’ve evaluated, the writing I’ve done to help colleagues articulate their practice as research. In pulling all that together, I realised how cyclical this story is.
Back at that first AMPE conference, we were building a community from scratch. Today, we’re trying to build one again – only this time across digital platforms, data standards, and research infrastructure.
The policy challenge
If you work in research management, this is your problem too. Practice research now sits comfortably inside the REF, but not inside the systems that sustain the rest of academia. We have no shared metadata standards, no persistent identifiers for creative outputs, and no national repository.
Every university has built its own mini-ecosystem. None of them connect.
The sector needs collective leadership – from UKRI, the AHRC, Jisc, and Universities UK – to treat creative practice research as shared infrastructure. That means long-term funding, coordination across institutions, and skills investment for researchers, librarians, and digital curators.
Without that, we’ll keep reinventing the same wheel in different corners of the country.
Coming full circle
Pulling together that presentation for Capturing Creativity reminded me how far we’ve come – and how much remains undone. We no longer need to justify creative practice as research. But we still need to build the systems, the culture, and the networks that let it circulate.
Because practice research isn’t just another output type. It’s the imagination of the academy made visible.
And if the academy can’t imagine an infrastructure worthy of its own imagination, then we really haven’t learned much from the last twenty-five years.
Today’s medicine is deeply rooted in the advancements of methods and technology in the field of medical research. From uncovering the causes of diseases to developing new therapies and preventive strategies, medical researchers connect the curiosity of science with the compassion of medicine.
Alvin Pham
Pre-Medical Committee, American Physician Scientists Association
Behind every statistic is a patient, and behind every breakthrough is a team of scientists, physicians, and participants working toward a healthier world. These diverse goals of medical research give rise to a range of specialized careers, each contributing to health innovation in unique ways. The following are some of the most impactful paths within the field.
Physician-scientists
Physician-scientists combine clinical care with laboratory or clinical research. They investigate disease mechanisms, develop therapies, and translate discoveries from the bench to the bedside.
It requires an M.D./D.O. and Ph.D. (about 8 years), followed by 3-7 years of residency and fellowship training, or an M.D./D.O. (4 years) with residency and research experience.
Physician-scientists bridge the gap between science and medicine by turning laboratory findings into real treatments. Their dual expertise enables them to identify and resolve clinical needs and lead interdisciplinary teams that directly improve patient outcomes.
Clinical research scientists
Clinical research scientists design and conduct studies to evaluate new treatments, diagnostics, and interventions in human subjects. They often work in hospitals, universities, or pharmaceutical companies, focusing on the safety and efficacy of medical innovations.
To become a clinical research scientist typically requires a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences or clinical research (about 4–6 years) or an M.D./D.O. (4 years) with research experience. Postdoctoral training may add 2–4 years.
Clinical research scientists advance evidence-based medicine by generating the data that guides clinical decisions. Their work ensures that new drugs, devices, and therapies are both safe and effective before reaching patients.
Public health researchers
Public health researchers investigate population-level health trends, disease prevention strategies, and policy impacts. Their work informs public health programs, pandemic response, and health equity initiatives.
This role typically requires a Master of Public Health (M.P.H.) (about 2 years) or a Dr.P.H./Ph.D. in public health or epidemiology (about 4–6 years).
Public health researchers shape the health of entire populations through data-driven research and public policy. Their work reduces disease burden, addresses health disparities, and guides interventions that save lives on a global scale.
Medical anthropologists
Medical anthropologists study how culture, society, and behavior shape health and illness. They often work in global health, public policy, or academic research, analyzing medical practices across different populations.
This job typically requires a Ph.D. in anthropology or medical anthropology (about 4-6 years), sometimes preceded by an M.A. in anthropology (about 2 years).
Medical anthropologists link social and cultural factors and show how those influence health behaviors and care delivery. Their insights improve communication between healthcare providers and patients, fostering culturally sensitive and effective medical practice.
Biotechnology researchers and engineers
Biotechnology researchers and engineers develop and test new biomedical technologies such as genetic therapies, diagnostic tools, or drug delivery systems. They work in academic, corporate, or government research labs, bridging biology and engineering.
This role typically requires a Ph.D. in biotechnology, molecular biology, or bioengineering (about 4-6 years), although Master’s-level researchers (2 years) can enter industry positions earlier.
Biotechnology researchers drive innovation in medicine by developing new tools and technologies that transform diagnosis and treatment. Their discoveries enable personalized medicine and accelerate the development of next-generation therapeutics.
Medical research is not a single path or person but a network of disciplines united by a shared goal: to improve human health through discovery and innovation. Whether exploring cultural influences on health as an anthropologist or translating lab findings into clinical care as a physician-scientist, each role contributes a vital piece to the puzzle of modern medicine. Together, these careers form the foundation of scientific progress, turning questions into cures and curiosity into compassion.
