Abstract

How is going to be professionalism for RMAs in a post-pandemic era? Which skills can we expect to require following the pandemic? Following these questions, this presentation aims to define what professionalism for today’s RMAs is – consisting of qualifications, associations, professional frameworks, among others – but, above all, what we could expect this professionalism – with its set of skills and expectations - to be in a post-pandemic future.

We all know that Higher Education worldwide has been experiencing a period of identity crisis and widespread criticism following the pandemic. For this reason, in a post-pandemic age to come, research managers (RMAs) could be expected to reshuffle their skills and re-invent themselves, not only to cope with an era where even professional knowledge has a limited lifespan, which was already something to expect, according to Barnett (2008); but also to create a new idea of professionalism and up-to-date skills for the times lying ahead.

All this may even end up requiring the re-design of professional frameworks and qualifications so the reshuffle of what we are and know so far in today’s research management and administration. This is going to impact professional associations, our institutions and on RMAs.
This is, therefore, a call to action to begin re-inventing these skills as soon as we can.

This presentation is meant to be theoretical, with an empirical part describing cases of skills we could expect to acquire or need. It moves from the ongoing search of a definition of RMA to explore the move from administration to management (following Whitchurch, 2008); starting from here, we'll spot the set of skills that we can expect to seek in an early future and the idea of professionalism that lies ahead of all of us.