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Leaders of research excellence

Senior researchers - with colleagues from the University's Department for Learning Development and the Graduate Research School - are involved in a collaborative project which aims to design, deliver and evaluate a leadership development programme to support 15 strategic leaders of research excellence across all three post-92 higher education institutions in the North East – º£½ÇÖ±²¥, Sunderland and Northumbria universities.

The project, leading and managing research excellence in a post-92 university, is being led by Dr Mark Proctor, from the University of Sunderland and is funded by the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education. The programme is being delivered by a number of experts in research leadership in higher education, who are providing the ideal environment for research leaders to consider and develop their own vision, strategy and leadership approach. The development programme will benefit individuals on the programme and the three universities involved, by enabling research leaders to shape their institutional research environment more effectively in the future.

Beverly Simpson, Deputy Director of the University's Department for Learning Development, said: 'Although we have a long established programme of leadership development for academic and support staff it had been a number of years since we offered a leadership development programme specifically for our research leaders.

'This project provides a fantastic opportunity for us to fill that gap and to work collaboratively with Sunderland and Northumbria Universities providing colleagues who participated with the additional benefit of networking with other research leaders in the region. I think the programme has been a great success and I hope we are able to continue to offer it as part of our package of support for leadership and management development at º£½ÇÖ±²¥.'

Dr John Blenkinsopp, Assistant Dean (Research) in º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Business School added: 'This was an exceptionally useful programme, the guest speakers were excellent, but like all programmes of this kind the greatest learning came from interacting with other delegates. I was in the process of writing our School’s research strategy when the programme began and it has been greatly influenced by ideas generated and explored during the programme.'

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