Abstract

The University of Helsinki set a goal in its strategic plan for 2021–2030 according to which in 2030, “the University will enjoy an increasingly established international standing as a scientific partner, especially thanks to its ground-breaking discipline-specific expertise as well as its multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research”. In line with this goal, the University drafted a roadmap for implementing research themes, serving as an overall framework and indicating a course that the university wishes its unit-level research activities to take. Roadmaps of the faculties were then prescribed as implementations of the university-level map, and they were to consist of objectives based on the university-level goals and plans for development in each area. Our team, engaged with this implementation task, includes four RMAs, and we work with five different faculties in the field of social sciences and humanities.

The most problematic aspect in implementing the university-level roadmap on the level of faculties had to do with the tension between administrative and academic perspectives. The project met with some opposition as the demand for implementation could be perceived as an unwelcome top-down burden straining already tight resources and going against academic freedom. A crucial feature of the solution offered by our team consisted in turning the focus “upside down” and beginning in a bottom-up manner from the actual interests and development needs related to the research environments instead. These interests and needs consisted of legitimate concerns that could be experienced as relevant for research quite independently of any administrative demands for implementation.

A central role in achieving a constructive solution to the initially perceived tension was played by the RMAs whose self-identified task was to act as interpreters, editors, and diplomats, bridging the top-down administrative and bottom-up research-oriented perspectives in a productive way. Active teamwork and reciprocated support between the RMAs working with all five SSH faculties at the City Centre Campus was also essential to the success of the enterprise. The importance of teamwork and the mediating role of RMAs are thus the two primary take away messages of the presentation.