Abstract

While AI has entered the stage in research support and will likely be increasingly useful for many tasks, we believe that personal support and relationships will continue to be essential for success.
Working with research support pre-award is not only a question of having the skills to guide researchers through the proposal phase by dissecting topics, support with the writing, and handling all the administrative hassles. Although it is important to have a good toolbox with templates, charts, and timelines, it is also crucial to know your researcher and target the support, based on some personal traits.
In our experience, the kind of support we give to coordinators of Horizon Europe collaborative projects at the University of Copenhagen, varies substantially from coordinator to coordinator. The collaboration between the coordinator and the research support is sometimes short and sweet but often extend for many months or even years. We see that no matter how much we try to stream-line our processes, we must always be prepared to adjust them to fit with the coordinator “persona”.
In our presentation we will discuss the different coordinator “personas” we meet and the diverse roles we find ourselves in. We will claim that awareness, and some degree of proactivity can save some frustration for both researcher and research support.

Structure of presentation:
1. Introduction of “personas” and required personal skills (15 min)
Coordinator Personas:
- The Star: Experienced in H2020/HE, previous coordinator and insight into EC politics.
- The Know-it-all: Experienced, but uninterested in advice from RMS staff
- The Nervous newcomer: New to the HE programme, insecure, with limited experience and network internationally.
- The Clueless newcomer: Successful researcher but has no insight into EC politics or the complexity of the collaborative projects.
- The Time-optimist: Completely underestimating the time required.
- The Pessimist: Tend to look negatively and pessimistically at the way the topic is formulated and the possibility of writing a competitive proposal.
- The Control freak: Want to be in complete control of the proposal and consortium.
- The Relaxed: Lots of ideas and open to input but lacking structure and decision power.
- The Hostage: Pushed into the role as coordinator by the consortium.
- The wingman/woman: Not the actual coordinator but an influential partner.
Examples of role of the research support:
- Secretary – Keeping track, book meetings and collect information
- Driver – Steer the process, project management and coordination.
- Expert / Analyst – Be the “EU guru” and know all the tricks,
- Psychologist – Encourage and give hope to the coordinator
- Proposal-slayer – When it is just not good enough

In the introduction we will present figures for mapping and matching personas and support skills.

2. Exercise (10 min): Your own experience
3. Discussion and wrapping up (5 min)

Learning outcomes:
- Identify your coordinator “persona”
- Figure/matrix for mapping of coordinator
- Greater awareness of own role and necessary skills
- Awareness of importance of personal skills when recruiting new staff