Ignite: Research Culture at Cardiff University

The Ignite project will enable early career researchers (ECRs), technicians and professional services staff to be effective leaders and advocates for positive culture, embedding cultural leadership across Cardiff University. We believe our culture can be enhanced through this critical and vibrant group, embodying positive cultural values, and creating pan-institutional influence. We will enhance how people identify with and value membership of our research community, fostering and strengthening associated beliefs, normative expectations, and behaviours. Through a multi-stranded leadership development programme shaped around participant needs but with a common core of positive culture orientation, we will: 

• Grow leaders through increasing support for personal empowerment to drive positive behaviours, support role models and enhance continuous improvement. 
• Pilot upskilling and building personal attachment to positive research culture values. 
• Stimulate community building outside traditional hierarchical structures using innovative, cross-disciplinary learning environments, based on cohorts of peers with shared lived experiences. 
• Embed a multi-dimensional, integrated view of positive culture, avoiding silos and fragmentation of cultural elements that need to be connected. 

The communities in which we will invest are the bedrock and future of the University: 

• Teaching & Research (T&R) ECRs; 
• Research-only (R-only) ECRs; 
• Professional Services (PS) staff that enable research; 
• Technicians enabling research.