Dr Amaya Albalat

Why do you think a positive research culture is important?

I believe positive research culture is a fundamental building block to research excellence.

What aspects of Research culture are most important to you?

Ensuring we support and value behaviours, values and strategies that support researchers and the environment we work in.

Can you give an example of an action you have taken to improve research culture?

I was Head of PGR at the Institute of Aquaculture for a number of years. Within this role, I introduced a number of changes to make sure PhD students felt supported and they had mechanisms to raise not only concerns and difficulties but also new ideas. This was done by setting up student representatives for different year groups, introducing regular meetings with all PhD students and by providing a platform where anonymised feedback could be sent to the PGR Committee.

What is something that you personally would like to do next to improve research culture?

I am just now co-organising with a colleague (Dr Lynne Falconer) a series of impact case study workshops at a divisional level particularly aimed at ECR aimed at creating a supportive environment where we can discuss and visualise how impact looks like and follow this by thinking which processes we should put in place to ensure that the development and final selection of impact case studies for REF2027 are open, inclusive and bottom up.