Research and Impact @ Manchester (September 2025)
11 Sep 2025
A message from Colette Fagan, Vice-President for Research
Dear colleagues,
Welcome to the September 2025 edition of Research & Impact @ Manchester.
We have another packed edition for you this month, particularly in our Research culture and environment section.
Our President and Vice-Chancellor, Duncan Ivison explored our Research culture and environment in his vlog. Duncan discussed our offering with Cathal Rogers, our Research Culture and Assessment Manager who was on the REF 2029 People Culture and Environment pilot panel and is on the REF 2029 panel secretariat. He also heard the personal experiences of two of our academics, who have been awarded funding for their projects to improve Research culture and environment here at Manchester yet further. I was fascinated and inspired by Charlene Gallery, project lead for Breaking Barriers by Fostering Interdisciplinary Research Amongst Black Female Academics, and Nia Coupe, project lead for Embedding Sustainable Practices in Non-Laboratory-Based Research. They are both a perfect example of how we can all work together to make Manchester a great place to work, not only solving global problems with pioneering and innovative research but ensuring that work has a positive impact on everyone involved.
One of the four themes of our Research culture and environment framework is Open Research so it was good to see more than 120 delegates from across the country and abroad attended our second annual Open Research Conference, bringing together a breadth of expertise. The conference – opened by our Institutional Lead for Open and Reproducible Research, Professor Andrew Stewart – also generated further resources for colleagues.
Further updates and support
We have redesigned our EU funding pages to make them clearer and easier to navigate, following the UK’s return to the EU’s flagship science research programme Horizon Europe. This happened last year, after a three-year Brexit lockout, and new data has revealed UK scientists have been awarded around £500m in grants since re-entry. So do take a minute to look at the pages to find what options and support are there for you:
We also have a new Research Visibility Checklist to help you boost the prominence of your work. It cleverly presents simple, high impact ways you can raise your profile in different timescales, from a few minutes to change your email signature to bigger commitments such as writing for The Conversation. So, you can pick out what you can do and when to raise your profile, share your work more widely, and support the University’s research reputation:
We have also published a page setting out our defence-related activities and demonstrating how we make sure that they are carried out appropriately and within the law. Our University’s work with defence and security organisations is important, especially considering geopolitical events today. At the same time, it is vitally important that our staff and students can critically evaluate and analyse what governments and other organisations do. This page represents our commitment to transparency and academic freedom:
Across the University, we have agreed four themes for action following the results of our colleague engagement survey. They are: Building your career at Manchester; Leading Change; Bullying, harassment and discrimination; and Workload and Resources. We are getting to work straight away, working together across the whole University community, including our campus trade unions, to turn your feedback into action.
And finally, the University has updated its Policy and Procedure on Contracts of Employment so that employees on a Fixed Term Contract who reach 3 years’ service are automatically be transferred to a Finite Funded Permanent Contract (FFPC). Senior leaders worked with the UMUCU, UNITE and UNISON to reduce dependence on casualised employment wherever practicable for both academic and Professional Services staff.
Innovation – from strength to strength
Our innovation ambitions go from strength to strength, with the University and Cambridge being awarded £4.8 million for cross-UK innovation partnership by Research England. We will pioneer a new model of place-to-place collaboration, setting an example for other cities to follow and driving economic growth for the UK. A joint effort involving our own Unit M, Innovate Cambridge, the two Mayoral Combined Authorities, City Councils, businesses and investors, it’s a prime example of how a university-led, cross-UK innovation collaboration can enhance the UK's global competitiveness and foster innovation-driven growth.
We’re also celebrating the Turing Innovation Catalyst (TIC), funded by Innovate UK and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and incubated here at the University, for accelerating our region’s growth into a global AI superpower. Since its launch in 2023, TIC has worked with more than 170 AI innovators and companies, and over 1,000 skill-seekers through a portfolio of programmes and funded support.
Celebrating our people
I am delighted that more of our research community colleagues have been appointed to REF 2029 panels, thus playing a vital role in the sector's delivery of our national research excellence framework. It is a testament to their standing in their respective fields, and their wealth of experience and expertise. I am very proud and wish them all well.
I would also like to congratulate the recipients of the Distinguished Achievement Awards, particularly our Researchers of the Year, Postgraduate Research Students of the Year and Dr Hamied Haroon, who won the General Distinguished Achievement Award.
The citations of Hamied; Professor Tim Brown, Biology, Medicine and Health; Professor Radha Boya, Science and Engineering; Professor Melanie Giles, Humanities; Dr Jennifer Davies, Biology, Medicine and Health; Gillian McArthur, Science and Engineering; and Niamh Cashell, Humanities make for wonderful reading.
I am sad to say that our Associate Vice-Chancellor for Research, Professor Nigel Hooper retired from the University earlier this month. Nigel has been a wonderful colleague for many years, and we will miss him. Personally, I am grateful for the excellent leadership and energy that Nigel gave in this role, which provides a springboard for his successor, Professor Richard Curry’s work in the next stage of our strategy.
We are also looking for a worthy successor for Professor Richard Jones, our retiring Vice-President for Civic Engagement and Innovation. This is a role that shapes how we deliver on our civic mission and drive innovation across Greater Manchester and beyond at an exciting time for our University and I am looking forward to meeting and working with our new colleague.
Finally, I would like to remember Lord David Alliance CBE, a long-standing friend and inspiration to our University for many years. Manchester Business School was renamed Alliance Manchester Business School in 2015 in tribute to his transformative impact and support and his belief in the power of philanthropy, education and research to drive positive change.
Colette