It has been 18 months since we published our report on equity and inclusivity in research funding across the sector. The report documented the barriers experienced by researchers in marginalised groups when securing funding, and importantly highlighted what funders or institutions could do about it.
UKRI’s most recent diversity data – for 2021–22, published in April 2024 – has reaffirmed that the needle has still not moved on inequity in research funding. For example, white applicants still had a higher award rate than did Black or Asian applicants, and white males received the largest percentage of awards as both PIs and co-investigators.
It is therefore tempting to start asking questions about the impact of our report. As one of many publications on this agenda, can it really make any difference? How will we know if it has, or if it will?
Don’t just admire the problem
We are greatly encouraged by (and grateful for) the joint problem-solving we have undertaken with the sector over the past six months. In partnership with Oxentia, an innovation management consultancy, we conducted solution-oriented conversations with over 27 UK universities (of different shapes and sizes, from all the home nations) and 11 funders. The outputs of this process include a public statement, three working principles, and six priority actions that we can work on jointly across the sector.
Time will tell whether there is a causal link between the report’s findings, the follow-on actions, and the outcomes. We therefore will not spend time “admiring the problem”. The process we have followed in implementing the recommendations of the report is just as important as the individual and collective actions that we are taking. So in this article, we reflect on the process, in the hope that this will assist others.
Sources of motivation
At the outset of the project, we thought we could develop consensus around the recommendations of our 2023 report, such as obtaining better data on the diversity profile of funding applicants, and accounting for structural inequality in review and assessment processes.
We rolled out a staged process of engaging universities and funders in the hope of securing commitment to an (albeit to-be-refined) modest set of sector recommendations. We quickly learned that stakeholders were driven primarily by the opportunity to mobilise sector-wide actions – building on their currently identified EDI priorities – and not merely by implementing any report! If only we could leverage the existing drivers for change, we would accelerate the pace of change in the research funding ecosystem while enhancing the scale of impact of the report.
So, rather than asking sector partners to endorse our proposed recommendations, we tried to reach consensus by providing them with information (such as a summary of the findings of our report), testing our own assumptions, and then moving on to create the direction collaboratively. This approach transformed the engagement process into an iterative play back of the information we provided, what we heard them say about it, and how what they said changed subsequent approaches – and then seeking further input to get to an even more refined position.
Guided, but not directed
At the same time, we found that when we engaged with questions that were too open, sector partners tended to expand the scope of the mission to “all things EDI” as opposed to those focused specifically on research funding.
Thus, key to the success of our engagement process was the prior development of guided, but not directive, proposals (such as a skeleton of the public statement) which were flexible enough for stakeholders to subject them to iterative scrutiny and modification.
We noticed that participants were understandably unable to adapt their organisational strategies, governance processes, and action plans to fit a joint sector one – and that it was unfair to ask them to do so. So we agreed to focus on actions that lay at the interface of funders and institutions.
Universities and funders
A comparison of our engagement with universities and with funders was also enlightening. University contributions focused on actions that funders could do to enable equity in research funding – while funders focused on what universities could do, for example, through their demand management processes. Bringing both sides to an in-person forum in February 2024 enabled the two sides to appreciate each other’s perspectives and to craft the outputs in a way that responded to both sides.
We continue to broaden the reach and impact of our report through other kinds of engagement that could enhance this work further, such as presenting to conferences and governance groups in each home nation of the UK, and participating in collaborative cross-university funding bids.
It was reassuring to find an agreed need for sector-wide action along the lines we had proposed. It was clear that what was missing was a convener who would connect the sector to fill a gap at the interface of universities and funders, while focusing only on the issues that could be advanced through collective action. This perhaps might be the key mechanism through which the true and eventual impact of the report might become clear.
To get involved and find out more about the forum please visit this page, and to become members of the forum please contact us.
