Institutional Funding for Research Culture (IFRC)

Our proposal aims to build a diverse health research workforce who will collaborate on nurturing and sustaining an inclusive, ethical and creative research environment that supports the research and mental health/well-being of colleagues across their academic careers from PGR to Professor. Our activities build on the successes of our ISSF programme, and provide tailored support for First Gen, Black, people of colour and other groups recognised as being disadvantaged in HE (including returning from a career break), to further their research and careers in health and health-related subjects. We have proposed a suite of pilot projects which aim to test the hypothesis that we can support the development of a diverse, inclusive, ethical and creative research culture across the institution through 1) developing a diverse academic workforce from the bottom up; 2) improving recruitment and retention of a diverse academic workforce from ECR to Professor; and 3) the co-production of knowledge in health research with people with lived experience. Within each of these strands we have identified several activities as targets for innovation.