By John Warwick, CAD/CAM Manufacturing Technician, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Leeds

The third annual International Research Culture Conference was held at the University of Warwick hosted by the National Centre for Research Culture. It was well attended with approximately 300 in person attendees with a similar number following proceedings online. This number has increased year on year since the first conference in 2023.

It was a pleasure to attend the conference as a representative, alongside Hardy Whiteley-Boocock, of the technical team who delivered ‘Ubuntu – Engineering Carnival’ and the subsequent ‘Light Night’ projects. We presented a poster with Prof Briony Thomas, which detailed the carnival project, a collaboration between Faculty of Engineering and Physical Science technicians and Leeds West Indian Carnival community designers. Thank you to Kacper Dobras who was unable to attend the conference but collated the poster for us.

Our poster can be found here and the other posters here.

The recurring theme of the conference was “context”. It was a raised by Director of Research at Research England, Steven Hill, in his plenary presentation as well as by every speaker on the internationally represented panel discussion. Prof Cat Davis – Dean of Research Culture at Leeds – likened it to boiling an egg or a potato. The same conditions harden one and soften the other i.e. intervention can have differing effects in different contexts. This is something which should be considered within the technical workforce.

Almost universally, speakers agreed that research culture needs to be incentivised by funders and publishers. In universities it has mainly been driven by funders and REF priorities. For technicians to raise the visibility of their work it is important that they are fairly attributed and recognised for their contributions in research publications according to the universities Fair Attribution Guidelines.

All staff should ensure that their  Symplectic and ORCID profiles are active and linked together. Regularly updating Symplectic with your work as research outputs and checking to accept any which have been added on their behalf should be routine. It may be a pleasant surprise for some to find some research outputs waiting to be accepted. The onus is on the individual to ensure that they are being properly acknowledged and recognised for their contributions.

In one of the parallel sessions Sarah McLusky delivered her talk “Snakes and Ladders – The reality of professional development for research enablers”. A straw poll of the audience showed around two thirds considered themselves to be research enablers, myself included. Sarah’s short presentation succinctly covered the discrepancies in the experiences this group of people have in comparison to their “researcher” colleagues. She raised numerous points many of us will be familiar with, such as lack of career pathways, promotion and availability of training across the sector.

It was brilliant to hear someone so passionately representing this work force. The soundbite that most struck a chord for me was simply “Research culture isn’t only about researchers”. Sarah’s report of the IRCC and her talk can be found on her podcast – Research Adjacent.

There were numerous terms used throughout the day which would describe technicians or a collective in which technicians could be placed. Phrases such as research enablers, research adjacent people, research technical professionals etc. The number of occasions I identified as a person within the context of the discussion, whatever the label, was encouraging, with the landscape for technicians being on the radar of the research culture community and there is evidence of a positive shift in the landscape for technicians at Leeds.

However, Prof Cat Davis stated during her plenary International Research Culture Conference 2025 presentation that there are barriers even for senior university leadership wishing to instigate change, which was disheartening to hear. There are University policies which “closed doors” and opposition using arguments such as “it’s just another thing” and “it takes time and money”. If the senior leadership doesn’t have the power to make the changes to research culture that they deem necessary, then who does? Prof. Davis also noted that research culture improvements may face future challenges due to financial constraints within the sector.

It was a great insight into the problems faced by other groups of people within research and the work being done by passionate people to improve research culture. I left Coventry in good spirits, with hope for further positive changes for everyone working in research in the future. Thank you to UK RAS STEPS for supporting my attendance at IRCC 2025 and their ongoing support of research technicians.