1.2 Research strengths and critical mass
It is important to have a good sense of your particular research strengths and those that have been identified within your university. You need to build your research strategy around your core research strengths, as an important consideration for any funding body will be your track record and proven credentials. We will come back to this in the next topic.
If you are linked to a research focus that has been identified as a university strength, then you are likely to have greater access to funding and facilities than might otherwise be the case. As the earlier examples of university strategic plans shows, there is an increasing tendency among universities to concentrate or prioritise their funding far more than was once the case.
So what do you do if you find you are not in a designated research priority area? One avenue to consider is joining an existing Research Institute, Centre, Unit, or established Group or Network if you have relevant skills and/or knowledge. For example, a multi-disciplinary area like climate change may draw on environmental science, environmental law, demographics, architecture, public health, etc. Your contribution might also be in the form of particular research techniques that complement the existing mix of capabilities. You will gain from the association (if the group is good), find additional collaborative opportunities, and possibly benefit from specific university funding available to these structures, as well as enhanced opportunities to apply for additional external funding. Each university will have a number of these structures, and there will be others supported by external organisations. You can also look at Cooperative Research Centres (CRC), of which there are many spread across Australia, covering a wide variety of research areas. Details can be accessed at https://www.crc.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx .
Alternatively, you might seek out some international research partners to increase your credibility. Remember that research is a global endeavour, and is influenced by the international environment and the desire of most institutions to develop internationally recognised research capabilities. You may be aware that the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former United States Vice-President Al Gore for "their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change". Did you know that the IPCC involved thousands of leading scientists and officials from more than 100 countries collaborating to assess the scientific evidence for global warming? That is global networking on a massive scale, but it shows that there are opportunities out there.
Certainly multi- or cross-disciplinary research can add an extra dimension to your portfolio, and is often encouraged as a way of exploring big-picture issues, e.g. climate change. However, it can also raise its own challenges for a researcher, such as fitting in with less flexible funding and publishing categories, different expectations of individuals in different disciplines, different ways of working, funding vagaries, etc. Also, in cross-institutional arrangements there can be additional issues with which to deal, such as agreements on funding shares, etc.
Gaining international stature should be the aim of most research leaders, as it is of most research-intensive institutions. However, this will be part of a longer-term strategy and, in the latter case, is often associated with the development of a critical mass. As an individual, you cannot expect this to happen overnight and it will take a lot of extra effort, but the payoff is that it can open up additional funding resources not previously available to you.
Modules