Team research: academics, professional services teams and external partners

The JUST Centre for Joined-Up Sustainability Transformations is a major new ESRC Centre led by Professor Sherilyn MacGregor. JUST’s programme of research seeks to go beyond dominant approaches to low carbon living that focus on ‘behaviour change’ and explain how more transformative and socially just approaches can be developed and scaled. Across five years, the Centre’s team will ask: what works, when, where and for whom – and what could work – to facilitate and implement joined-up interventions for a just transition to low carbon living?  

A challenge of this scale and complexity demands expertise from multiple institutions, disciplines and sectors. JUST brings together researchers from the universities of Manchester, Leeds, Lancaster, Liverpool and Newcastle as well as the Institute of Community Studies/The Young Foundation. The JUST team will use an innovative, interdisciplinary mix of data science and participatory action research methodologies, drawing on their expertise in politics, sociology, human geography, environmental management, urban studies and business studies. Crucially, JUST will co-produce solutions with a network of community and practice partners, many of whom have deep and long-standing relationships with the researchers involved.

The consortium and ESRC Centre bid were developed over a period of more than two years, with the research team working closely with partners and UoM research development, research support and impact teams. A 2-day in-person workshop in April 2023 proved crucial for consolidating relationships and building a shared vision for the centre. Consortium-wide meetings were supplemented with thematic working groups (each with a different lead) to collaboratively design the programme of research. Multiple professional service teams contributed time and expertise: research support teams prepared the complex multi-million-pound budget; impact teams supported stakeholder mapping and the ‘theory of change’ logic model; research development teams advised on funder requirements, reviewed and redrafted application sections and prepared the team for the final interview. The Sustainable Futures research platform provided valuable internal peer review and Policy@Manchester helped broker connections with the Government Office for Science, who served on mock interview panels.

This inclusive, reflexive and accountable approach will continue across the Centre’s lifetime – it’s organisation and ethos are designed to drive an exemplary research culture. Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) and sustainability plans will be reviewed regularly; chairing of the Centre’s Executive Group will rotate; the thematic working groups will comprise researchers at all career stages, including doctoral researchers. Capacity-building within and beyond academia is at the heart of the centre; all Centre staff (not just Early Career Researchers, as is often the case) will benefit from professional development planning and mentoring. JUST will also build the capacity of both practice and academic partners through the co-production of evidence that meets their respective needs.

As Chloe Jeffries, Research Development and Innovation Manager (Faculty of Humanities) said: “This ESRC Centre application was a team endeavour. Working closely on the bid, I saw first-hand the sustained effort that so many colleagues – from different disciplines, institutions and sectors – put in to make it a success. What was particularly satisfying from my perspective was how different Professional Services teams contributed different points in the process and the way in which the project lead and academic team thanked all those involved. We all had a clear common goal and this, along with the importance of the research, made supporting JUST so worthwhile.”