Abstract

With the growing interest in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary (ITD) research to address urgent societal challenges, from the global pandemic to the climate and biodiversity crises, researchers are increasingly called upon to lead collaborative research projects and work with teams across disciplines and sectors. How does this expand the role of RMAs? The recent H2020 project SHAPE-ID synthesised knowledge on the challenges of ITD research and created recommendations and a toolkit to improve supports and understanding. A Guide for Pre-Award RMAs, produced for SHAPE-ID [1] and presented at the 2021 EARMA conference [2], proposed that RMAs have an important role to play in helping researchers respond to such challenges, from building a pipeline to supporting ITD team-building and proposal development. RMAs can also contribute to connecting ITD knowledge and best practice within a university, where such knowledge can often be dispersed and fragmented, and they often have significant ‘interactional expertise’ from routinely bridging disciplinary and sectoral perspectives. Furthermore, RMAs may play important roles in post-award project management of ITD research projects, acting as knowledge brokers, facilitators and integrators. In our research-intensive university, our interdisciplinary research team supports Horizon Europe collaborative proposal development and works to build capacity for ITD research through events and guidance. Building on these insights about what roles RMAs can play and our team’s experience to date, we have conducted a benchmarking survey to explore the range of activities RMAs in European universities currently undertake to support ITD, whether directly (through new initiatives or explicit remits) or indirectly (as part of the daily practice of proposal development, researcher development or project management).

In this presentation, we will provide an overview of the potential contributions of RMAs to advancing institutional support for ITD research, then present the preliminary results of our benchmarking survey, conducted with university members of LERU, the Coimbra Group, The Guild and the Irish Universities Association, to explore the various ways RMAs are currently supporting ITD research development. We aim to identify areas where the RMA profession is expanding in response to funding and policy priorities around ITD and what additional training, career development or recognition might be needed to support such roles. In the longer-term it is hoped this work and discussion with conference participants will seed further community activities on sharing experience and best practice, contributing to the work of RM Roadmap and CARDEA to better understand the expanding RMA profession.

Attendees will have the opportunity to:
- Reflect on how RMAs can support inter- and transdisciplinary research in their institutions
- Learn about the range of supports RMAs currently offer, through early access to our survey results
- Participate in the next iteration of the survey and follow-up activities to improve knowledge and best practice sharing in RMA supports for ITD research

A follow-up discussion table will take place on Wednesday 26 April 11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. (Europe/Prague) – Club B, where participants are invited to share and discuss their own experiences of or interest in supporting ITD research.

References
[1] SHAPE-ID. (2021). SHAPE-ID Toolkit Resources - Quick Guide for Pre-Award Research Managers and Administrators. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4743701
[2] Burgess, M., and Wallace, D. (2021). Improving Quality Social Sciences and Humanities Integration: Lessons from the SHAPE-ID Project. EARMA Digital Conference 2021.