Emerging Research Cultures
Wellcome Trust Strategic Project
2020-2025
What is the Emerging Research Cultures project?
This project is tasked with setting up a community of practice among 23 PhD programmes in the Biomedical Sciences, funded by the Wellcome Trust in 2019. The community of practice shares experiences and practices to enhance research culture, so that jointly, we gain a shared understanding of effective practices. The project also has a research component, which it carries out through participative, reflective, study of the processes of changing research culture.
Phase One of the project was initially funded until October 2022, and then extended to January 2023. Phase Two of the project was commissioned by the Wellcome Trust and began in February 2023, running until August 2025. Read more about Phase Two of the project here.
Community of Practice
The 2019 PhD training funding call stressed the importance of improving research culture, alongside achieving scientific excellence. It is not always clear what research culture is, or what are the best ways of improving it, and acting in this field can be daunting. One way of making this more manageable is through a community of practice, where practices and experiences can be shared, reflected upon and learned from, together with others who are also facing the same issues and challenges. Read more about communities of practice and research culture.
We aim to understand how research culture is experienced by people involved in PhD training i.e. students, academic staff, professional services staff; and to share experiences and understandings of research culture, of what is working (or not!) to sustain positive research culture and inform future practices and policies.
If you want to learn more about the various facets of Research Cultures, we put together a collection of useful links exploring a diversity of themes including careers, research assessment and EDI, amongst others.
Ongoing projects
Our PhDlife journaling study aims to get insights into the experience of PhD students directly from the people experiencing it. We want to understand how PhDs are impacted by research culture; and also get a sense of the trends in research culture change as these affect the lived experience of students. Read more about it here.
We are currently undertaking visits to all PhD programmes, during which we deliver workshops to all involved in PhD training i.e. students, academic staff, professional services staff exploring themes of scientific identities, collaboration and interdisciplinarity, and careers.
We have a well-sourced and ever-growing multi-media collection of resources on Race and Gender in Medicine and Science that aim to provide entry points to some of the main topics and debates concerning the relationships between race, gender and science. You can consult the complete collection here.
We are taking part in the ongoing conversation around the new criteria set up by the UK Research and Innovation for the 2029 Research Evaluation Framework (REF). Read our response to the REF’s change of research assessment criteria giving greater priority to research culture, in Times Higher Education.
Past projects
Read our most recent report on the pivotal role Professional Services Staff play in research culture change: Carusi, A., & Gomez-Gutierrez, M. (2024). Professional Services Staff: A report on experiences of research culture in Wellcome-funded PhD programmes. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/p3jrf
Read our paper on how the supervisor-student relationship presents itself as a leverage point for bringing about widespread systems change: Martin R, Nasir N and Carusi A. Enhancing research culture through PhD training: a systems approach to identifying leverage points for policy formation [version 1; peer review: awaiting peer review]. Wellcome Open Res 2023, 8:422. https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.19567.1
Most of our reports are internal and shared within the community. Some of them have now been published on the open archive of the social sciences SocARXiv, with the Community of Practice as a collective co-author:
Carusi, Annamaria, Laura Castells, Corey Gilmore, Wellcome Trust PhD Programmes Community of Practice (2022). Pandemic Experiences: A report on experiences of research culture in Wellcome funded PhD programmes during the COVID-19 pandemic. SocArXiv papers. 10.31235/osf.io/m864n
Carusi Annamaria, Rebecca Martin, Nazia Nasir, Wellcome Trust PhD Programmes Community of Practice (2022). Talking About Research Culture: A report on discussions about research culture in Wellcome Trust PhD programmes. SocArXiv papers. 10.31235/osf.io/rek2z
Carusi Annamaria, Rebecca Martin, Nazia Nasir, Directors of Wellcome Trust PhD Programmes Community of Practice (2022). From the Directors: A report on Wellcome Trust PhD Programmes’ Role in Improving Research Culture in PhD Training. SocArXiv papers. 10.31235/osf.io/z8wde
About us
Read here about team members working on this project.
Follow us on LinkedIn or feel free to contact us at erc@inter-changeresearch.com
