In Conversation with John Kingman

Leach and Kingman: a masterclass in body language

John Kingman is one of the most powerful figures in UK research. After all, he was the man who appointed the '£6 million man', Mark Walport. He is the non-executive chair of UKRI.

At Wonkfest this year, Kingman spoke to Mark Leach about UKRI, working with the government, the REF and post-Brexit life.

The Breathless Pursuit of Excellence

'Excellence of physique': soon to be a REF category
(Image: Wellcome CC BY)

The rhetoric of excellence has become all pervasive in higher education and beyond. We all aspire to excellence, but what does it actually mean? It's become an empty phrase that can mean anything to anyone - and that's its appeal.

Research Funding and the Premiership

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a university in possession of a good research income must be in want of more. At the Association of Research Managers and Administrators conference in Birmingham earlier this year, Randolph Haggerty of the University of Leeds and Ann Charlett-Day of the University of Sheffield explored this perplexing maxim. Can we really all grow bigger? And, if so, how?

Like Oliver Twist, all universities want more, and many are met with disbelief. Haggerty came clean and said that his own institution aimed to increase its research income by 50 per cent. Others are even more ambitious: Kent aims to double its income and the University of Huddersfield aims to triple it. This, Haggerty suggested drily, was “challenging”.

Nevertheless, the present climate gives universities little choice. The Research Excellence Framework uses research income as a metric to measure a healthy research environment. The results of that feed through into league tables, which, in turn, inform the recruitment of students and staff.

Opening up the Black Box of Peer Review

Liz Allen

Last month I attended a session at KBS on the Future of Research Assessment. I wrote up some notes from this, and particularly the talk by Prof John Mingers, here. 

Also speaking at the event was Liz Allen, Director of Strategic Initiatives at F1000. She published some thoughts on it on the F1000 blog, and has kindly allowed me to republish them here. 

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I recently participated in a workshop hosted by the University of Kent Business School – the subject was whether metrics or peer review are the best tools to support research assessment. Thankfully, we didn’t get embroiled in the sport of ‘metric bashing’, but instead agreed that one size does not fit all and that whatever research assessment we do, while taking account of context, needs to be proportionate.