November 4, 2025 • 28 mins
Sarah reports from the Festival of Hidden REF held in Birmingham on 8 October 2025. This episode features contributions from organisers, speakers and participants including
- Hidden REF committee members Simon Hettrick and James Baker sharing the story behind the event
- Previous Hidden REF competition winners Laura Henderson and Lorraine van Blerk highlighting hidden roles in research
- Speaker Elisa Collado and participants Emily Ennis, Jo Williams and Alix Brodie-Wray and Nick Sheppard sharing their takeaways and what still might be missing from the conversation
Find out more
- Read the full show notes and transcript on the podcast website
- Connect with guests Simon Hettrick, James Baker, Laura Henderson, Lorraine van Blerk, Elisa Collado, Emily Ennis, Jo Williams and Alix Brodie-Wray or Nick Sheppard
- Find out more about Hidden REF on their website or follow them on LinkedIn. You can find the list of hidden roles that Simon mentions here.
- Listen to the What the REF?! podcast
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- Fill out the research-adjacent careers quiz
- Sign up to the Research Adjacent newsletter
- Email a comment, question or suggestion
- Leave Sarah a voice message
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Simon Hettrick (00:01):
There are so many hidden roles.
There are so many roles that arevital, but unrecognized in research.
Elisa Collado (00:07):
As much as certain funders have made an effort to be more inclusive
and include diversity of roles, end of theday they ask you about research outputs.
Alix Brodie-Wray (00:17):
We might be straying into a kind of tokenistic appreciation
of hidden roles and actually it'sa deeper change that's needed.
Sarah McLusky (00:25):
Hello there.
I'm Sarah McLusky andthis is Research Adjacent.
Each episode I talk to amazing researchadjacent professionals about what
they do and why it makes a difference.
Keep listening to find out why wethink the research adjacent space
is where the real magic happens.
(00:46):
Hello and welcome along to whatis the 80th episode of Research
Adjacent, which I have to saydoes feel like a very big number.
If you're new and you like whatyou hear, that back catalogue
will keep you going for a while.
So make sure you check itout after this episode.
For today, I've got another eventreport, and this time it's from The
Hidden REF Festival in Birmingham.
(01:06):
This meeting ran over two days onthe 7th and 8th of October, 2025, but
I only attended on the second day.
Attending on the second day involveda 5:00 AM start and seven hours on the
train there and back from Newcastle.
But it was fantastic to be in a roomwith people who, like me, are trying
to broaden our concept of what it meansto contribute to research and also
(01:29):
what research excellence looks likeif we think bigger than publications.
Through this episode, you'll hearfrom some of the speakers and
attendees, including the organisers,Simon Hettrick and James Baker,
Hidden REF Competition winners.
Laura Henderson and Lorraine Van Blerk,speaker Elisa Collado, and a group
of participants from the Universityof Leeds, including Emily Ennis,
Jo Williams, Alix Brody-Wray, andprevious podcast guest, Nick Sheppard.
(01:52):
In a moment, I will let Simon andJames tell you a bit more about
the Hidden REF, but I want tobegin with a bit of jargon busting.
If you work in a UK university, thenyou probably know exactly what REF is.
However, I know that there are peoplelistening from all over the world,
so for your benefit, REF stands forResearch Excellence Framework and it's
(02:13):
a research evaluation exercise whichassesses the quality of research in
higher education institutions in the UK.
It ran for the first time in 2014 andthen again in 2021, and we are now
gearing up for third round, which isgonna be, as far as we know in 2029.
It's a big deal for universities becauseit determines what funding they receive,
(02:34):
and also, as you can probably expect, itaffects their reputation and everybody
wants to come at the top of the list.
However, as you can also probablyguess, the process has not been without
criticism and the whole research cultureconversation really began with REF,
and it is rooted in the whole idea ofwhat excellent research looks like.
(02:58):
Indeed, the genesis of this podcastand my drive to showcase the amazing
work of people who are employed inresearch adjacent roles is rooted in my
own experience during REF 2021 when Iworked as a research project manager.
At the time, I was pretty surprised tosee the amount of work that went into
(03:20):
preparing for the exercise and howmuch people fretted about the outcome.
I was also in my job responsible forwriting the impact case study for the
research project that I worked on.
And almost everything that went intothat case study was work that I had
project managed or led on in some way.
So it included a multi venue exhibition,it included a podcast that I had created,
(03:44):
a website that I built and wrote, and aco-design intervention that I coordinated.
And I was, if I'm being absolutely honest,insulted that although we named every
researcher who had made even a glancingcontribution to the research, there was
nowhere on the document to acknowledgeme or the other non researchers who
had actually done the impact work.
(04:07):
I was not alone in this frustration,it has to be said and Hidden
REF's origin story is similar.
Hidden REF began in 2020 withthe goal of celebrating all
research outputs and everyone whois involved in their creation.
Their focus is on two particular areas,hidden roles and non-traditional outputs.
(04:28):
Hidden roles is their term for what Icall research adjacent, all the skilled
and experienced, but often unrecognizedpeople who are crucial to research
happening and getting out into the world.
And non-traditional outputs, which Ishould say is still a debated term, but
it includes things like the exhibition,podcast and website that I talked about
earlier, as well as things like software,data, and even chemical reagents, which
(04:52):
make a valuable contribution to knowledgebut can't be cited or quantified as
easily as traditional publications.
So hopefully that's helped you understandwhy the Hidden REF movement is so
important to anybody interested inresearch adjacent roles, and why I was
willing to get up at 5:00 AM and traipseall the way to Birmingham just to be
in a room with other people who careas much as about this stuff as I do.
(05:17):
On the day I managed to get a few peopleto be willing to talk to me for this
podcast, and two people I was superkeen to talk to were the organisers,
Simon Hettrick and James Baker.
They're both academics, but don't holdthat against them, at the University of
Southhampton and members of the HiddenREF Committee, with Simon being the chair.
I asked them to tell me a bitmore about Hidden REF and what
(05:39):
they hope to get out of the event.
Simon Hettrick (05:41):
I'm Simon Hettrick
James Baker (05:42):
And I'm James Baker.
Sarah McLusky (05:44):
And so you are both involved in running the Hidden REF
which is the event that we're at today.
I wonder if one of you would like totell me a bit about what is Hidden REF?
Simon, do you want to take that one?
Simon Hettrick (05:55):
I can take that one.
So yeah, so The Hidden REF cameabout because we're really interested
in research adjacent careers, andmy past was running a campaign
to support one of those careers.
We took it right through, fromits inception with the title right
through to being a very significantinternational community spanning 14
different countries and the impact ofsupporting that, that new career path.
(06:20):
So this is for research softwareengineers in UK academia largely.
The impact of that was that we sawthat the skills that were reintroduced
into the research communityreally drove research forward.
And we were interested in how can we dothis for other research adjacent careers,
not just the research software engineers.
And that led to the Hidden REF.
Sarah McLusky (06:39):
Yeah.
And maybe tell us a bit about, youdescribe these roles as hidden roles.
What kind of roles areyou including in that?
What sorts of conversationsyou've been having?
Simon Hettrick (06:49):
The most exciting thing is we don't know.
So it's, there are so many hidden roles.
There are so many roles that arevital, but unrecognized in research.
So we started off with, a selectionof people that I knew about and then
people just started coming to us'cause they saw the work that we were
doing and the thing I've always foundreally interesting about these research
adjacent roles and these hidden roles.
(07:09):
Was that people would come and say, ohI'm not actually listed on the website.
So are we allowed to takepart and be Yeah, absolutely.
That's the whole point of this is to getrecognition for all these people without
whom research could not be conducted.
So it's a huge range.
I think there's about 20 different titlesnow and they're all up our website if
anybody's interested in what they are.
Sarah McLusky (07:27):
Oh, fantastic.
I'll definitely get alink and put that on.
I think I found the samewith research adjacent.
It's just the number of people whoare kind of like, me too me too.
Yeah.
I feel the same way, which is great.
So we're here at theHidden REF event today.
James, I wonder if you could tellus a bit about what's happening.
James Baker (07:44):
So we're here in Birmingham for two days for an event that is
focused in part on those hidden roles.
And in part on thinking about thekind of non-traditional outputs
or non-traditionally submittedoutputs that come out of research,
particularly in relation to thingslike research exercises like the REF.
But really it's a community event.
It's an opportunity to get a lotof different people together.
Simon mentioned before all thepossible people who contribute
(08:05):
to making research happen.
And what we are learning is thatsome of the kind of the role
specifications that came out of theearly competitions that we had, where
people came to us and said, these arethe roles we think need recognizing.
There's just more of them.
And so people are here.
So we opened this out as an open eventfor two days to come along and just help
us as a group who are trying to, campaignin this area to improve our work through
(08:27):
that kind of bottom up community emphasis.
And that's been something wehad from the beginning, right?
It's always been about bottom up working.
So it's been a learning experience,I think, for us as organizers because
we are getting people coming alongand saying how are we gonna work
in this particular context withthese particular kinds of people?
Which is what you want, right?
Sarah McLusky (08:45):
Yeah.
And do you have a goal, an aimfor something you're hoping will
come out of the event today?
James Baker (08:49):
So one of the things we've been doing is collecting information.
Not in a kind of an extractive wayfrom the community, but collecting
bits of information about how theythink different types of work might
be assessed, which are in some casesconnected to those hidden roles.
We've also spent some time todayjust working on like how people
think individual types of outputthat come out of different types
of work might be evaluated as well.
(09:11):
So we're doing lots of work in that area.
And we are hoping we can then spendthe next few months looking at that
information, feeding it back to thecommunity, and then also importantly
feeding it into the next Hidden REFcompetition where we know lots of
people in those research adjacent roleswill be applying to be recognized.
Sarah McLusky (09:26):
And is there news of that next Hidden REF competition?
Do you know when it's gonna be?
James Baker (09:31):
It'll be in 2026.
We will be, we'll be launchingthe kind of call in the new year
effectively and making the kind ofdetails of the competition open.
One of the things I think we'regonna need to spend some time on just
REFlecting on the evaluation criteriafor all the different roles and all
the different types of output thatmight come through the competition.
But again, we might just findthat there are output types or
(09:52):
role types we didn't expect.
Simon Hettrick (09:54):
The thing I think is gonna be really exciting about this competition
was in the past we held the competitionreally just to put a spotlight on the
vital work that's been going on and thevital people that make that work happen.
This time we're actually starting to bemore stringent on the assessment because
the information that we're gatheringthrough running the competition is gonna
be fed back, fed to the conventionalREF or the mainstream REF or whatever
(10:14):
you want, you wanna call that?
So because the idea is we're giving themthat guidance so they will be able to
start like including things that aren'tusually included in the REF and that
means representing people who aren'tusually included in the REF as well.
So that's really exciting.
Sarah McLusky (10:27):
Yeah, look forward to that and certainly we'll
share the details once we know.
As you heard, the Hidden REFcompetition is where the campaign
began, and it's an important part oftheir work still as part of the day,
we heard from some of the winnersof the 2024 Hidden REF competition.
And after the talks, I was able tochat with hidden rules winners, Laura
Henderson and Lorraine Van Blerk.
(10:48):
First up, here's Laura sharing thework that she was nominated for
and what winning has meant to her.
Laura Henderson (10:53):
I'm Laura Henderson.
I work as a research developmentmanager at Royal Brompton and Harfield
Hospitals, which is part of Guys andSt Thomas's NHS Foundation Trust.
And my role is primarily to supportresearchers at our hospitals in
submitting grants and fellowshipsto external research funders.
And that was what my nominationwas based on, was the support
(11:14):
that I give our researchers withtheir fellowship applications.
Sarah McLusky (11:18):
So I think what's really interesting about your role, and I'm sure
what caught the attention of the judges,is that people don't think about research
as something that happens in hospitals.
So it tells us about some ofthe research that you've got
going on and who's doing it.
Laura Henderson (11:32):
We do so much research in our NHS Foundation Trust.
We do regulated drug studies, devicestudies feasibility studies everything and
anything is on the cards and staff acrossour hospitals, including nurses, midwives,
allied health professionals, healthcarescientists, pharmacists, physiologists,
(11:52):
the whole shebang, obviously alongwith doctors, they all get involved.
They all run their ownresearch and develop their
own clinical academic careers.
So I would not have turned down theoffer to come and speak here today.
There was an offer to submit a video.
But I wanted to use this platform toshowcase my role and hope that it does
(12:12):
become more mainstream across NHSs andthe opportunity that the hidden role
has given me which I spoke about today.
I've got a bigger team because of it.
I've got a secondmentopportunity because of it.
It's just been fantastic.
It's definitely been something that Iwould regard as the pinnacle of my career.
Sarah McLusky (12:31):
I then spoke to Lorraine Van Blerk, who's a professor of Human
Geography at the University of Dundee.
Now, I should say, before we come on,Lorraine was actually the nominator rather
than the winner, and she nominated a groupof peer researchers that she worked with.
Let's hear more.
So you were here today talking about youraward from the Hidden REF Competition,
(12:53):
which was all about, I say your award.
Maybe we should reframe it, butall about hidden roles in research.
Tell us about the hidden rolesthat you were centering today.
Lorraine van Blerk (13:01):
So I nominated a group of 18 young researchers who took part
in a project called Growing Up on theStreets that we ran from 2012 to 2020.
And they were homeless young people wholived on the streets in three African
cities, in Accra in Ghana, BUKavuin the DRC and Harare in Zimbabwe.
(13:24):
And they undertook ethnographicresearch with their peers over a
period of three years producing alarge scale qualitative data set
that amounted to almost two and halfthousand narratives about street life.
Sarah McLusky (13:38):
That's an incredible achievement for young people who I'm
presuming that this was their firstexperience of doing something like this.
Lorraine van Blerk (13:46):
Yes.
And many of them hadn'treally been to school.
They had maybe been to one or twogrades in school and they were, as I
said, homeless, living on the streets,living in informal areas, and making a
living on a day-to-day survival basis.
Sarah McLusky (14:03):
And so what difference do you think it made to
them to be part of the research?
Lorraine van Blerk (14:08):
I think it made a significant difference
in many different ways.
So just to be asked to undertake researchor to be partnering in a research project
was both confidence building, we did alot of training so that they could then
become partners, both not in the re notjust in the research, but also in the
(14:28):
knowledge exchange and dissemination,talking to stakeholders and coming up with
their own ideas of how to disseminate.
The work that they've done,but for others, it has led
on to other opportunities.
So travel opportunities to givetalks or some were employed as
street workers in an organizationbased on the work that they've done.
(14:50):
They've been involved in meetingsaround influencing government policy
and strategy, and so for them it'sabout recognizing their skills
and abilities and that they can dowhatever they set their mind to do.
Sarah McLusky (15:06):
I have to say that the full story of the street children was
very moving, especially hearing whatthey've gone on to do since some of them,
I have to say, have had happier endingsthan others, but it is in particular a
fantastic example of these roles thatcould be really easily neglected if
we just look at the standard hierarchyof research and who does research.
(15:29):
Another part of the day, includinglightning talks from a variety
of topics covering things likethe emotional labor of academic
housekeeping, various non-traditionaltypes of outputs, neurodiversity,
and the importance of technicians.
I managed to catch up with one speaker,Elisa Collado, to ask her about the talk
that she gave on the role of PRISMs.
(15:50):
You've been talking todayabout the role of PRISMs and
the challenges that they face.
First of all, for any of who doesn't knowthe term, can you tell us what a PRISM is?
Elisa Collado (15:58):
Yes.
Professional research,investment and strategy managers.
And it basically means a lot of thecommunities, research development
managers, so people that are related togetting funding for research projects.
But it's not only including those, so Iwas a knowledge exchange officer, so I'm
not involved directly with getting money,but I was still part of the PRISMs team.
Sarah McLusky (16:22):
Yeah, it's a really big and varied role.
So you were talking today about someof the challenges that PRISMs face as
being part of the research community.
Can you tell us more about that?
Elisa Collado (16:32):
Yeah, I mean, as, as you probably heard, one of the
things is that our work is notvery well recognized within the
university and research environment.
We face a lot of things like short termcontracts which means carrying work is
sometimes difficult because you have tochange roles and you have uncertainty.
And also the professional developmentside, the as, as much as certain
(16:57):
funders have made an effort to be moreinclusive and include diversity of roles.
End of the day they ask you aboutresearch outputs, the traditional
research outputs that we've beendiscussing about in this conference.
And you don't, you can't really proveany of that with these type of roles
because you're in a supportive type ofrole, which means you are helping other
people to enhance their research outputs.
(17:19):
But that in itself isnot a research output.
So you can't really justify, and accessall these funding that could help you
to do, even more interesting stuff.
Sarah McLusky (17:30):
Yeah.
And there's also a kind of equality anddiversity dimension to this, isn't there?
Elisa Collado (17:35):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I mean I presented briefly the statsabout, basically it's a, it is a
community that is predominantlyfemale led, more than 90% women.
And a lot of us are trained withmasters, even PhD, how almost
half of the community's got PhD.So we have a good grasp of what
(17:56):
research is and how to produce it.
And we also have the availability.
'cause a lot of these things andhow research is being produced
doesn't kind of call PIs.
They're so overwhelmed with all the stuffthat they actually don't get involved.
So it's us who getinvolved in these things.
We know about it.
We get involved, but then wedon't get given the opportunities
to do more with our knowledge.
Sarah McLusky (18:19):
Previous podcast guests, David Wright and Nick
Sheppard were also attending and itwas lovely to catch up with them.
And Nick kindly introduced me to anumber of his colleagues from the
University of Leeds and they agreed toshare their thoughts on the festival.
So that you get to know their voices andlet them all introduce themselves first.
Nick Sheppard (18:36):
Hello, I'm Nick Sheppard, Open Research Advisor at the, basically
the library at the University of Leeds.
Alix Brodie-Wray (18:41):
I'm Alix Brodie-Wray, the Faculty Impact Development Manager for
Arts, Humanities, and Cultures at Leeds.
Emily Ennis (18:46):
I'm Emily Ennis.
I'm the Research Culture Managerfor the University of Leeds.
Jo Williams (18:49):
I'm Jo Williams and I'm a Research Manager at the University
of Leeds and a faculty levelcoordinator for research excellence.
Sarah McLusky (18:56):
So we're at the Hidden REF Festival today, and I'm
just interested to hear about theconversations you've been having today,
what it's got you thinking about.
Who wants to go first?
Jo Williams (19:07):
I think it's been really interesting today talking about the
non-traditional outputs first of all, fromlike a technical, operational perspective
on how we support our academics.
But for me it's been really interestingconnecting with other people actually
in my institution who I wouldn'tnormally necessarily come across.
And understand like where our sharedconcerns are and what we can do to go
away back to our institution and put intopractice some of the things or maybe like
(19:27):
surface more of the problems in a waythat we'll look at them collectively.
Whereas we might not have done that beforesimply because it's a huge institution
and sometimes it's really hard to comeacross people who are doing the same
thing as you when everyone's superbusy in their everyday to day lives.
Nick Sheppard (19:40):
Although we are all colleagues at Leeds and we do all work
together it's such a big institutionwe didn't actually know that the others
were going to be at this event today.
Gives you an indication.
We were just, I was just saying toEmily a moment ago that we'll, have
to have a debrief and get together andthis has been really valuable just for
our networking, let alone with othercolleagues here from other universities.
Emily Ennis (19:58):
One of the things that we as a research culture team have looked
at is how we recognize and celebratediverse outputs and diverse research
contributions at the University of Leeds.
And that's always been thinking aboutonce the output is produced, or once
the research contributions have beenmade, how do we talk about them?
But the problem that we have timeand time again at the University of
(20:19):
Leeds, and which has come up time andtime again here today, and theREFore
is clearly not just a Leeds problem,is how do we encourage those diverse
research contributions in first place?
How do we encourage thosediverse research outputs?
And so much of the time, it feelslike additional work, and it really
is particularly for academics, butthe problem is a lot of that work
(20:39):
is already being done by thosepeople who have those hidden roles.
But that's still not being celebratedand it's still not being encouraged.
So I don't know how we move fromthe celebration model, which
is actually focused on outcomeversus the enabling aspect because
all of the work is invisible.
And yes, we can make it visible againby celebrating it, but we're all really
(21:02):
tired and, to keep going and hope thatsomeone recognizes the work, that's
the thing that academics are vocalizingreally loudly is why should I keep going?
Why should I do a journalarticle and a podcast?
Yeah.
I just wanna do the journal article,whereas we are going, why do I have
to just keep doing the job for someoneto actually recognize what I'm doing?
No, I think we're starting tocome to maybe some practical
(21:24):
next steps for outputs.
But I think we really need to thinkabout those practical next steps
for people and those hidden roles.
Alix Brodie-Wray (21:30):
I think something that really, it's reminded me of my
experiences in the past, especiallyin a school, the last REF and like
all of that work that went into it.
You know, case studies that, wewrote ourselves, but then, obviously
we didn't do the research but thatthat, not being lauded and noticed.
And we've seen like a culture changerecently where there's there's a
(21:51):
lot of kind of dropping in of goodintentions around including non-academic
staff in funding opportunities.
But what was really interesting wasone of those lightning talks where
they talked about the actual barriersthat still exist and there's a bit of
a, we might be straying into a kindof tokenistic appreciation of hidden
roles and like actually it's a deeperchange that's needed in the whole
(22:12):
way we organize workload or buyout orall of these sort of pragmatic things
that will hopefully lead one day tothat work being more surfaced really.
Nick Sheppard (22:23):
In terms of our roles as well I just wanted to say, believe it
or not, given the fact that we didn'teach know that we were going to be
here, we are really good at connectingcolleagues at the University of Leeds.
That's our superpower if you like.
I know that you like to talkabout superpower don't you
and we do connect colleagues.
I'm based in the library,Emily's central as well.
We've got colleaguesin the faculty as well.
But we have a unique sort ofperspective over the whole university,
(22:45):
and we can connect people in totallydifferent disciplines, totally
different parts of the university.
Emily Ennis (22:49):
But connections aren't outputs.
And I think that's the challenge here.
And I've got, and my brain, my annualappraisal hat on coming up at the moment,
and I'm thinking, what have I done?
What have I done in the last year?
The answer is put people inthe right places, improve
things that are already there.
And I and so I think that when youlook at outputs, that's the thing.
Here's the thing, I did it.
Woo amazing.
(23:10):
And maybe that output is a research grant.
Maybe it is a nontraditionaloutput or an output or whatever.
But the work that we're all doingfor that is a real ecosystem.
We're putting people in the right places.
We're having conversations withnegotiating, influencing, embedding.
That stuff's just not visiblebecause there isn't an output,
because there isn't a thing thatyou can look at and go there it is.
(23:32):
But the thing is, it's thething that's keeping us at
emails on our desks every day.
And also that if we stopped doing,everything else would fall down.
Yeah.
And I dunno how you make that visibleother than, making academics shadow
me all day every day, which I wouldn'twant and they definitely wouldn't want.
So I don't know how we do that.
Sarah McLusky (23:50):
I was struck that both Elisa and Emily mentioned
how important it's to highlightthe vital and time consuming, but
utterly invisible work that goes intocoordinating and supporting research.
This work doesn't lead to any outputs,whether traditional or otherwise, but
without it, the entire system wouldcompletely collapse, and that leads
to the recurring challenge as wellthat was mentioned of defining exactly
(24:14):
what we mean by excellent research.
I think we all know it when we see it,when we experience it, when we feel it,
but it's almost like great art and itcan be really hard to define and actually
pinpoint what it is that makes it great.
There is an ongoing debate abouthow much the REF assessment should
focus on research outputs andhow much it should focus on the
(24:35):
environments, people, and processes.
It might be no surprise to hear that I amfirmly in favor of process over output,
but then I completely acknowledge thatI am not a researcher and my career
doesn't depend on me having a stringof highly cited publications on my CV.
It's a complex subject and frankly,I am glad that I am not the one
(24:56):
having to make these decisions.
If you want a much more nuanceddiscussion about what is going
on with REF, then I can highlyrecommend the What The REF Podcast.
It's created by the Hidden REF Teamand hosted by Simon and James, along
with their colleague Gemma Derrick
I asked them to tell me alittle bit more about it.
And so the other reason I wanted totalk to you today is to talk a little
(25:20):
bit about your new podcast as well.
It's called What the REF.
And who would like totell us a bit about that?
James Baker (25:26):
I guess I can start.
I mean, it's, it's an attempt todemystify that's really what it's about.
And some of it is a kind of week byweek, blow by blow, these things have
happened, how do we understand them?
But really it's a, it's an opportunitywe think to like just step back from
the kind of the kind of the officepolitics I guess, of the REF and just
try and talk around the subject areain a slightly more accessible way.
(25:47):
And also to bring in experts and peoplewe want to interview who we think have
really interesting perspectives theycan offer whether things that are coming
out of particular institutions we canshine a light on, or frameworks that
we can draw upon as a wider sector.
And it's not meant to be too serious,which I think is nice as well.
Yeah.
And we are complimenting it as wellnow with some more sort of shorts
(26:07):
we're doing for YouTube as well.
Some of which will come out afterthe festival with, contributions
and people who've been here.
Simon Hettrick (26:13):
So I think the thing with the podcast is, that certainly if you
want to have a really popular podcast thatdraws in millions of viewers, you should
definitely choose a bureaucratic processthat's conducted only within the UK, no.
So, the, the thing is,it's quite a dry subject.
The REF is quite when we see presentationson the REF you'll generally get somebody
stand up, say runs every seven years.
(26:35):
There are 20 categories, thereare three different, and then you
get all that sort of information.
But the politics and the cultural changesaround the REF are incredibly vibrant
and that never really gets the spotlight.
So what we are doing in What theREF as well is talking about all of
that and talking about the effect ofthe REF and how it changes culture
and the sort of the things thatare happening within universities.
Some behind closed doors.
(26:55):
And we get to talk about all of the,the the rumor mill that's going on.
And it's really exciting as abroader subject area, but very
dull as a process in itself.
Sarah McLusky (27:04):
Yeah, definitely, there's lots of politics going on at the moment
yeah, that's something for people tolisten to as well, if they're interested.
We'll get the link andput it in the show notes.
So do make sure that you check outWhat the REF, wherever you get your
podcasts, and stay tuned for detailsof the next Hidden REF Competition.
As Simon and James said,it's coming up next year.
If you want to find out more aboutHidden REF or connect with any of
(27:26):
the guests featured in this episode,you'll find links in the show notes.
As for me, I will continue doing whatI can to highlight the hidden roles
that underpin research because trustme, you can't have excellent research
or good REF outcomes without researchadjacent folks like you and me.
So keep on fighting the goodfight and I'll see you soon.
(27:48):
Bye for now.
Thanks for listening to Research Adjacent.
If you're listening in a podcast app,please check your subscribed and then
use the links in the episode descriptionto find full show notes and to follow
the podcast on LinkedIn or Instagram.
You can also find all the links and otherepisodes at www.researchadjacent.com.
Research Adjacent is presented andproduced by Sarah McLusky, and the
(28:11):
theme music is by Lemon Music Studioson Pixabay and you, yes you, get a big
gold star for listening right to the end.
See you next time.
There are so many hidden roles.
There are so many roles that arevital, but unrecognized in research.
Elisa Collado (00:07):
As much as certain funders have made an effort to be more inclusive
and include diversity of roles, end of theday they ask you about research outputs.
Alix Brodie-Wray (00:17):
We might be straying into a kind of tokenistic appreciation
of hidden roles and actually it'sa deeper change that's needed.
Sarah McLusky (00:25):
Hello there.
I'm Sarah McLusky andthis is Research Adjacent.
Each episode I talk to amazing researchadjacent professionals about what
they do and why it makes a difference.
Keep listening to find out why wethink the research adjacent space
is where the real magic happens.
(00:46):
Hello and welcome along to whatis the 80th episode of Research
Adjacent, which I have to saydoes feel like a very big number.
If you're new and you like whatyou hear, that back catalogue
will keep you going for a while.
So make sure you check itout after this episode.
For today, I've got another eventreport, and this time it's from The
Hidden REF Festival in Birmingham.
(01:06):
This meeting ran over two days onthe 7th and 8th of October, 2025, but
I only attended on the second day.
Attending on the second day involveda 5:00 AM start and seven hours on the
train there and back from Newcastle.
But it was fantastic to be in a roomwith people who, like me, are trying
to broaden our concept of what it meansto contribute to research and also
(01:29):
what research excellence looks likeif we think bigger than publications.
Through this episode, you'll hearfrom some of the speakers and
attendees, including the organisers,Simon Hettrick and James Baker,
Hidden REF Competition winners.
Laura Henderson and Lorraine Van Blerk,speaker Elisa Collado, and a group
of participants from the Universityof Leeds, including Emily Ennis,
Jo Williams, Alix Brody-Wray, andprevious podcast guest, Nick Sheppard.
(01:52):
In a moment, I will let Simon andJames tell you a bit more about
the Hidden REF, but I want tobegin with a bit of jargon busting.
If you work in a UK university, thenyou probably know exactly what REF is.
However, I know that there are peoplelistening from all over the world,
so for your benefit, REF stands forResearch Excellence Framework and it's
(02:13):
a research evaluation exercise whichassesses the quality of research in
higher education institutions in the UK.
It ran for the first time in 2014 andthen again in 2021, and we are now
gearing up for third round, which isgonna be, as far as we know in 2029.
It's a big deal for universities becauseit determines what funding they receive,
(02:34):
and also, as you can probably expect, itaffects their reputation and everybody
wants to come at the top of the list.
However, as you can also probablyguess, the process has not been without
criticism and the whole research cultureconversation really began with REF,
and it is rooted in the whole idea ofwhat excellent research looks like.
(02:58):
Indeed, the genesis of this podcastand my drive to showcase the amazing
work of people who are employed inresearch adjacent roles is rooted in my
own experience during REF 2021 when Iworked as a research project manager.
At the time, I was pretty surprised tosee the amount of work that went into
(03:20):
preparing for the exercise and howmuch people fretted about the outcome.
I was also in my job responsible forwriting the impact case study for the
research project that I worked on.
And almost everything that went intothat case study was work that I had
project managed or led on in some way.
So it included a multi venue exhibition,it included a podcast that I had created,
(03:44):
a website that I built and wrote, and aco-design intervention that I coordinated.
And I was, if I'm being absolutely honest,insulted that although we named every
researcher who had made even a glancingcontribution to the research, there was
nowhere on the document to acknowledgeme or the other non researchers who
had actually done the impact work.
(04:07):
I was not alone in this frustration,it has to be said and Hidden
REF's origin story is similar.
Hidden REF began in 2020 withthe goal of celebrating all
research outputs and everyone whois involved in their creation.
Their focus is on two particular areas,hidden roles and non-traditional outputs.
(04:28):
Hidden roles is their term for what Icall research adjacent, all the skilled
and experienced, but often unrecognizedpeople who are crucial to research
happening and getting out into the world.
And non-traditional outputs, which Ishould say is still a debated term, but
it includes things like the exhibition,podcast and website that I talked about
earlier, as well as things like software,data, and even chemical reagents, which
(04:52):
make a valuable contribution to knowledgebut can't be cited or quantified as
easily as traditional publications.
So hopefully that's helped you understandwhy the Hidden REF movement is so
important to anybody interested inresearch adjacent roles, and why I was
willing to get up at 5:00 AM and traipseall the way to Birmingham just to be
in a room with other people who careas much as about this stuff as I do.
(05:17):
On the day I managed to get a few peopleto be willing to talk to me for this
podcast, and two people I was superkeen to talk to were the organisers,
Simon Hettrick and James Baker.
They're both academics, but don't holdthat against them, at the University of
Southhampton and members of the HiddenREF Committee, with Simon being the chair.
I asked them to tell me a bitmore about Hidden REF and what
(05:39):
they hope to get out of the event.
Simon Hettrick (05:41):
I'm Simon Hettrick
James Baker (05:42):
And I'm James Baker.
Sarah McLusky (05:44):
And so you are both involved in running the Hidden REF
which is the event that we're at today.
I wonder if one of you would like totell me a bit about what is Hidden REF?
Simon, do you want to take that one?
Simon Hettrick (05:55):
I can take that one.
So yeah, so The Hidden REF cameabout because we're really interested
in research adjacent careers, andmy past was running a campaign
to support one of those careers.
We took it right through, fromits inception with the title right
through to being a very significantinternational community spanning 14
different countries and the impact ofsupporting that, that new career path.
(06:20):
So this is for research softwareengineers in UK academia largely.
The impact of that was that we sawthat the skills that were reintroduced
into the research communityreally drove research forward.
And we were interested in how can we dothis for other research adjacent careers,
not just the research software engineers.
And that led to the Hidden REF.
Sarah McLusky (06:39):
Yeah.
And maybe tell us a bit about, youdescribe these roles as hidden roles.
What kind of roles areyou including in that?
What sorts of conversationsyou've been having?
Simon Hettrick (06:49):
The most exciting thing is we don't know.
So it's, there are so many hidden roles.
There are so many roles that arevital, but unrecognized in research.
So we started off with, a selectionof people that I knew about and then
people just started coming to us'cause they saw the work that we were
doing and the thing I've always foundreally interesting about these research
adjacent roles and these hidden roles.
(07:09):
Was that people would come and say, ohI'm not actually listed on the website.
So are we allowed to takepart and be Yeah, absolutely.
That's the whole point of this is to getrecognition for all these people without
whom research could not be conducted.
So it's a huge range.
I think there's about 20 different titlesnow and they're all up our website if
anybody's interested in what they are.
Sarah McLusky (07:27):
Oh, fantastic.
I'll definitely get alink and put that on.
I think I found the samewith research adjacent.
It's just the number of people whoare kind of like, me too me too.
Yeah.
I feel the same way, which is great.
So we're here at theHidden REF event today.
James, I wonder if you could tellus a bit about what's happening.
James Baker (07:44):
So we're here in Birmingham for two days for an event that is
focused in part on those hidden roles.
And in part on thinking about thekind of non-traditional outputs
or non-traditionally submittedoutputs that come out of research,
particularly in relation to thingslike research exercises like the REF.
But really it's a community event.
It's an opportunity to get a lotof different people together.
Simon mentioned before all thepossible people who contribute
(08:05):
to making research happen.
And what we are learning is thatsome of the kind of the role
specifications that came out of theearly competitions that we had, where
people came to us and said, these arethe roles we think need recognizing.
There's just more of them.
And so people are here.
So we opened this out as an open eventfor two days to come along and just help
us as a group who are trying to, campaignin this area to improve our work through
(08:27):
that kind of bottom up community emphasis.
And that's been something wehad from the beginning, right?
It's always been about bottom up working.
So it's been a learning experience,I think, for us as organizers because
we are getting people coming alongand saying how are we gonna work
in this particular context withthese particular kinds of people?
Which is what you want, right?
Sarah McLusky (08:45):
Yeah.
And do you have a goal, an aimfor something you're hoping will
come out of the event today?
James Baker (08:49):
So one of the things we've been doing is collecting information.
Not in a kind of an extractive wayfrom the community, but collecting
bits of information about how theythink different types of work might
be assessed, which are in some casesconnected to those hidden roles.
We've also spent some time todayjust working on like how people
think individual types of outputthat come out of different types
of work might be evaluated as well.
(09:11):
So we're doing lots of work in that area.
And we are hoping we can then spendthe next few months looking at that
information, feeding it back to thecommunity, and then also importantly
feeding it into the next Hidden REFcompetition where we know lots of
people in those research adjacent roleswill be applying to be recognized.
Sarah McLusky (09:26):
And is there news of that next Hidden REF competition?
Do you know when it's gonna be?
James Baker (09:31):
It'll be in 2026.
We will be, we'll be launchingthe kind of call in the new year
effectively and making the kind ofdetails of the competition open.
One of the things I think we'regonna need to spend some time on just
REFlecting on the evaluation criteriafor all the different roles and all
the different types of output thatmight come through the competition.
But again, we might just findthat there are output types or
(09:52):
role types we didn't expect.
Simon Hettrick (09:54):
The thing I think is gonna be really exciting about this competition
was in the past we held the competitionreally just to put a spotlight on the
vital work that's been going on and thevital people that make that work happen.
This time we're actually starting to bemore stringent on the assessment because
the information that we're gatheringthrough running the competition is gonna
be fed back, fed to the conventionalREF or the mainstream REF or whatever
(10:14):
you want, you wanna call that?
So because the idea is we're giving themthat guidance so they will be able to
start like including things that aren'tusually included in the REF and that
means representing people who aren'tusually included in the REF as well.
So that's really exciting.
Sarah McLusky (10:27):
Yeah, look forward to that and certainly we'll
share the details once we know.
As you heard, the Hidden REFcompetition is where the campaign
began, and it's an important part oftheir work still as part of the day,
we heard from some of the winnersof the 2024 Hidden REF competition.
And after the talks, I was able tochat with hidden rules winners, Laura
Henderson and Lorraine Van Blerk.
(10:48):
First up, here's Laura sharing thework that she was nominated for
and what winning has meant to her.
Laura Henderson (10:53):
I'm Laura Henderson.
I work as a research developmentmanager at Royal Brompton and Harfield
Hospitals, which is part of Guys andSt Thomas's NHS Foundation Trust.
And my role is primarily to supportresearchers at our hospitals in
submitting grants and fellowshipsto external research funders.
And that was what my nominationwas based on, was the support
(11:14):
that I give our researchers withtheir fellowship applications.
Sarah McLusky (11:18):
So I think what's really interesting about your role, and I'm sure
what caught the attention of the judges,is that people don't think about research
as something that happens in hospitals.
So it tells us about some ofthe research that you've got
going on and who's doing it.
Laura Henderson (11:32):
We do so much research in our NHS Foundation Trust.
We do regulated drug studies, devicestudies feasibility studies everything and
anything is on the cards and staff acrossour hospitals, including nurses, midwives,
allied health professionals, healthcarescientists, pharmacists, physiologists,
(11:52):
the whole shebang, obviously alongwith doctors, they all get involved.
They all run their ownresearch and develop their
own clinical academic careers.
So I would not have turned down theoffer to come and speak here today.
There was an offer to submit a video.
But I wanted to use this platform toshowcase my role and hope that it does
(12:12):
become more mainstream across NHSs andthe opportunity that the hidden role
has given me which I spoke about today.
I've got a bigger team because of it.
I've got a secondmentopportunity because of it.
It's just been fantastic.
It's definitely been something that Iwould regard as the pinnacle of my career.
Sarah McLusky (12:31):
I then spoke to Lorraine Van Blerk, who's a professor of Human
Geography at the University of Dundee.
Now, I should say, before we come on,Lorraine was actually the nominator rather
than the winner, and she nominated a groupof peer researchers that she worked with.
Let's hear more.
So you were here today talking about youraward from the Hidden REF Competition,
(12:53):
which was all about, I say your award.
Maybe we should reframe it, butall about hidden roles in research.
Tell us about the hidden rolesthat you were centering today.
Lorraine van Blerk (13:01):
So I nominated a group of 18 young researchers who took part
in a project called Growing Up on theStreets that we ran from 2012 to 2020.
And they were homeless young people wholived on the streets in three African
cities, in Accra in Ghana, BUKavuin the DRC and Harare in Zimbabwe.
(13:24):
And they undertook ethnographicresearch with their peers over a
period of three years producing alarge scale qualitative data set
that amounted to almost two and halfthousand narratives about street life.
Sarah McLusky (13:38):
That's an incredible achievement for young people who I'm
presuming that this was their firstexperience of doing something like this.
Lorraine van Blerk (13:46):
Yes.
And many of them hadn'treally been to school.
They had maybe been to one or twogrades in school and they were, as I
said, homeless, living on the streets,living in informal areas, and making a
living on a day-to-day survival basis.
Sarah McLusky (14:03):
And so what difference do you think it made to
them to be part of the research?
Lorraine van Blerk (14:08):
I think it made a significant difference
in many different ways.
So just to be asked to undertake researchor to be partnering in a research project
was both confidence building, we did alot of training so that they could then
become partners, both not in the re notjust in the research, but also in the
(14:28):
knowledge exchange and dissemination,talking to stakeholders and coming up with
their own ideas of how to disseminate.
The work that they've done,but for others, it has led
on to other opportunities.
So travel opportunities to givetalks or some were employed as
street workers in an organizationbased on the work that they've done.
(14:50):
They've been involved in meetingsaround influencing government policy
and strategy, and so for them it'sabout recognizing their skills
and abilities and that they can dowhatever they set their mind to do.
Sarah McLusky (15:06):
I have to say that the full story of the street children was
very moving, especially hearing whatthey've gone on to do since some of them,
I have to say, have had happier endingsthan others, but it is in particular a
fantastic example of these roles thatcould be really easily neglected if
we just look at the standard hierarchyof research and who does research.
(15:29):
Another part of the day, includinglightning talks from a variety
of topics covering things likethe emotional labor of academic
housekeeping, various non-traditionaltypes of outputs, neurodiversity,
and the importance of technicians.
I managed to catch up with one speaker,Elisa Collado, to ask her about the talk
that she gave on the role of PRISMs.
(15:50):
You've been talking todayabout the role of PRISMs and
the challenges that they face.
First of all, for any of who doesn't knowthe term, can you tell us what a PRISM is?
Elisa Collado (15:58):
Yes.
Professional research,investment and strategy managers.
And it basically means a lot of thecommunities, research development
managers, so people that are related togetting funding for research projects.
But it's not only including those, so Iwas a knowledge exchange officer, so I'm
not involved directly with getting money,but I was still part of the PRISMs team.
Sarah McLusky (16:22):
Yeah, it's a really big and varied role.
So you were talking today about someof the challenges that PRISMs face as
being part of the research community.
Can you tell us more about that?
Elisa Collado (16:32):
Yeah, I mean, as, as you probably heard, one of the
things is that our work is notvery well recognized within the
university and research environment.
We face a lot of things like short termcontracts which means carrying work is
sometimes difficult because you have tochange roles and you have uncertainty.
And also the professional developmentside, the as, as much as certain
(16:57):
funders have made an effort to be moreinclusive and include diversity of roles.
End of the day they ask you aboutresearch outputs, the traditional
research outputs that we've beendiscussing about in this conference.
And you don't, you can't really proveany of that with these type of roles
because you're in a supportive type ofrole, which means you are helping other
people to enhance their research outputs.
(17:19):
But that in itself isnot a research output.
So you can't really justify, and accessall these funding that could help you
to do, even more interesting stuff.
Sarah McLusky (17:30):
Yeah.
And there's also a kind of equality anddiversity dimension to this, isn't there?
Elisa Collado (17:35):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I mean I presented briefly the statsabout, basically it's a, it is a
community that is predominantlyfemale led, more than 90% women.
And a lot of us are trained withmasters, even PhD, how almost
half of the community's got PhD.So we have a good grasp of what
(17:56):
research is and how to produce it.
And we also have the availability.
'cause a lot of these things andhow research is being produced
doesn't kind of call PIs.
They're so overwhelmed with all the stuffthat they actually don't get involved.
So it's us who getinvolved in these things.
We know about it.
We get involved, but then wedon't get given the opportunities
to do more with our knowledge.
Sarah McLusky (18:19):
Previous podcast guests, David Wright and Nick
Sheppard were also attending and itwas lovely to catch up with them.
And Nick kindly introduced me to anumber of his colleagues from the
University of Leeds and they agreed toshare their thoughts on the festival.
So that you get to know their voices andlet them all introduce themselves first.
Nick Sheppard (18:36):
Hello, I'm Nick Sheppard, Open Research Advisor at the, basically
the library at the University of Leeds.
Alix Brodie-Wray (18:41):
I'm Alix Brodie-Wray, the Faculty Impact Development Manager for
Arts, Humanities, and Cultures at Leeds.
Emily Ennis (18:46):
I'm Emily Ennis.
I'm the Research Culture Managerfor the University of Leeds.
Jo Williams (18:49):
I'm Jo Williams and I'm a Research Manager at the University
of Leeds and a faculty levelcoordinator for research excellence.
Sarah McLusky (18:56):
So we're at the Hidden REF Festival today, and I'm
just interested to hear about theconversations you've been having today,
what it's got you thinking about.
Who wants to go first?
Jo Williams (19:07):
I think it's been really interesting today talking about the
non-traditional outputs first of all, fromlike a technical, operational perspective
on how we support our academics.
But for me it's been really interestingconnecting with other people actually
in my institution who I wouldn'tnormally necessarily come across.
And understand like where our sharedconcerns are and what we can do to go
away back to our institution and put intopractice some of the things or maybe like
(19:27):
surface more of the problems in a waythat we'll look at them collectively.
Whereas we might not have done that beforesimply because it's a huge institution
and sometimes it's really hard to comeacross people who are doing the same
thing as you when everyone's superbusy in their everyday to day lives.
Nick Sheppard (19:40):
Although we are all colleagues at Leeds and we do all work
together it's such a big institutionwe didn't actually know that the others
were going to be at this event today.
Gives you an indication.
We were just, I was just saying toEmily a moment ago that we'll, have
to have a debrief and get together andthis has been really valuable just for
our networking, let alone with othercolleagues here from other universities.
Emily Ennis (19:58):
One of the things that we as a research culture team have looked
at is how we recognize and celebratediverse outputs and diverse research
contributions at the University of Leeds.
And that's always been thinking aboutonce the output is produced, or once
the research contributions have beenmade, how do we talk about them?
But the problem that we have timeand time again at the University of
(20:19):
Leeds, and which has come up time andtime again here today, and theREFore
is clearly not just a Leeds problem,is how do we encourage those diverse
research contributions in first place?
How do we encourage thosediverse research outputs?
And so much of the time, it feelslike additional work, and it really
is particularly for academics, butthe problem is a lot of that work
(20:39):
is already being done by thosepeople who have those hidden roles.
But that's still not being celebratedand it's still not being encouraged.
So I don't know how we move fromthe celebration model, which
is actually focused on outcomeversus the enabling aspect because
all of the work is invisible.
And yes, we can make it visible againby celebrating it, but we're all really
(21:02):
tired and, to keep going and hope thatsomeone recognizes the work, that's
the thing that academics are vocalizingreally loudly is why should I keep going?
Why should I do a journalarticle and a podcast?
Yeah.
I just wanna do the journal article,whereas we are going, why do I have
to just keep doing the job for someoneto actually recognize what I'm doing?
No, I think we're starting tocome to maybe some practical
(21:24):
next steps for outputs.
But I think we really need to thinkabout those practical next steps
for people and those hidden roles.
Alix Brodie-Wray (21:30):
I think something that really, it's reminded me of my
experiences in the past, especiallyin a school, the last REF and like
all of that work that went into it.
You know, case studies that, wewrote ourselves, but then, obviously
we didn't do the research but thatthat, not being lauded and noticed.
And we've seen like a culture changerecently where there's there's a
(21:51):
lot of kind of dropping in of goodintentions around including non-academic
staff in funding opportunities.
But what was really interesting wasone of those lightning talks where
they talked about the actual barriersthat still exist and there's a bit of
a, we might be straying into a kindof tokenistic appreciation of hidden
roles and like actually it's a deeperchange that's needed in the whole
(22:12):
way we organize workload or buyout orall of these sort of pragmatic things
that will hopefully lead one day tothat work being more surfaced really.
Nick Sheppard (22:23):
In terms of our roles as well I just wanted to say, believe it
or not, given the fact that we didn'teach know that we were going to be
here, we are really good at connectingcolleagues at the University of Leeds.
That's our superpower if you like.
I know that you like to talkabout superpower don't you
and we do connect colleagues.
I'm based in the library,Emily's central as well.
We've got colleaguesin the faculty as well.
But we have a unique sort ofperspective over the whole university,
(22:45):
and we can connect people in totallydifferent disciplines, totally
different parts of the university.
Emily Ennis (22:49):
But connections aren't outputs.
And I think that's the challenge here.
And I've got, and my brain, my annualappraisal hat on coming up at the moment,
and I'm thinking, what have I done?
What have I done in the last year?
The answer is put people inthe right places, improve
things that are already there.
And I and so I think that when youlook at outputs, that's the thing.
Here's the thing, I did it.
Woo amazing.
(23:10):
And maybe that output is a research grant.
Maybe it is a nontraditionaloutput or an output or whatever.
But the work that we're all doingfor that is a real ecosystem.
We're putting people in the right places.
We're having conversations withnegotiating, influencing, embedding.
That stuff's just not visiblebecause there isn't an output,
because there isn't a thing thatyou can look at and go there it is.
(23:32):
But the thing is, it's thething that's keeping us at
emails on our desks every day.
And also that if we stopped doing,everything else would fall down.
Yeah.
And I dunno how you make that visibleother than, making academics shadow
me all day every day, which I wouldn'twant and they definitely wouldn't want.
So I don't know how we do that.
Sarah McLusky (23:50):
I was struck that both Elisa and Emily mentioned
how important it's to highlightthe vital and time consuming, but
utterly invisible work that goes intocoordinating and supporting research.
This work doesn't lead to any outputs,whether traditional or otherwise, but
without it, the entire system wouldcompletely collapse, and that leads
to the recurring challenge as wellthat was mentioned of defining exactly
(24:14):
what we mean by excellent research.
I think we all know it when we see it,when we experience it, when we feel it,
but it's almost like great art and itcan be really hard to define and actually
pinpoint what it is that makes it great.
There is an ongoing debate abouthow much the REF assessment should
focus on research outputs andhow much it should focus on the
(24:35):
environments, people, and processes.
It might be no surprise to hear that I amfirmly in favor of process over output,
but then I completely acknowledge thatI am not a researcher and my career
doesn't depend on me having a stringof highly cited publications on my CV.
It's a complex subject and frankly,I am glad that I am not the one
(24:56):
having to make these decisions.
If you want a much more nuanceddiscussion about what is going
on with REF, then I can highlyrecommend the What The REF Podcast.
It's created by the Hidden REF Teamand hosted by Simon and James, along
with their colleague Gemma Derrick
I asked them to tell me alittle bit more about it.
And so the other reason I wanted totalk to you today is to talk a little
(25:20):
bit about your new podcast as well.
It's called What the REF.
And who would like totell us a bit about that?
James Baker (25:26):
I guess I can start.
I mean, it's, it's an attempt todemystify that's really what it's about.
And some of it is a kind of week byweek, blow by blow, these things have
happened, how do we understand them?
But really it's a, it's an opportunitywe think to like just step back from
the kind of the kind of the officepolitics I guess, of the REF and just
try and talk around the subject areain a slightly more accessible way.
(25:47):
And also to bring in experts and peoplewe want to interview who we think have
really interesting perspectives theycan offer whether things that are coming
out of particular institutions we canshine a light on, or frameworks that
we can draw upon as a wider sector.
And it's not meant to be too serious,which I think is nice as well.
Yeah.
And we are complimenting it as wellnow with some more sort of shorts
(26:07):
we're doing for YouTube as well.
Some of which will come out afterthe festival with, contributions
and people who've been here.
Simon Hettrick (26:13):
So I think the thing with the podcast is, that certainly if you
want to have a really popular podcast thatdraws in millions of viewers, you should
definitely choose a bureaucratic processthat's conducted only within the UK, no.
So, the, the thing is,it's quite a dry subject.
The REF is quite when we see presentationson the REF you'll generally get somebody
stand up, say runs every seven years.
(26:35):
There are 20 categories, thereare three different, and then you
get all that sort of information.
But the politics and the cultural changesaround the REF are incredibly vibrant
and that never really gets the spotlight.
So what we are doing in What theREF as well is talking about all of
that and talking about the effect ofthe REF and how it changes culture
and the sort of the things thatare happening within universities.
Some behind closed doors.
(26:55):
And we get to talk about all of the,the the rumor mill that's going on.
And it's really exciting as abroader subject area, but very
dull as a process in itself.
Sarah McLusky (27:04):
Yeah, definitely, there's lots of politics going on at the moment
yeah, that's something for people tolisten to as well, if they're interested.
We'll get the link andput it in the show notes.
So do make sure that you check outWhat the REF, wherever you get your
podcasts, and stay tuned for detailsof the next Hidden REF Competition.
As Simon and James said,it's coming up next year.
If you want to find out more aboutHidden REF or connect with any of
(27:26):
the guests featured in this episode,you'll find links in the show notes.
As for me, I will continue doing whatI can to highlight the hidden roles
that underpin research because trustme, you can't have excellent research
or good REF outcomes without researchadjacent folks like you and me.
So keep on fighting the goodfight and I'll see you soon.
(27:48):
Bye for now.
Thanks for listening to Research Adjacent.
If you're listening in a podcast app,please check your subscribed and then
use the links in the episode descriptionto find full show notes and to follow
the podcast on LinkedIn or Instagram.
You can also find all the links and otherepisodes at www.researchadjacent.com.
Research Adjacent is presented andproduced by Sarah McLusky, and the
(28:11):
theme music is by Lemon Music Studioson Pixabay and you, yes you, get a big
gold star for listening right to the end.
See you next time.
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