Our Strategy

Our strategy is informed by five core principles: celebrating the breadth and diversity of our research; enabling research without boundaries; supporting staff in realising ambitious goals; contributing to culture, society and the economy; fostering a strong and inclusive research culture.

The 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF) confirm the outstanding quality and impact of our research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

In order to realise our goals, we need to understand, adapt to, and where possible lead, broader trends in our research and knowledge exchange environment. We will focus on four primary areas: research careers; research funding; equality, diversity and inclusion and Covid challenges.

We support research collaborations across Schools, mobilising expertise across disciplines to produce new insights and address major societal challenges.

Our 11 Schools cover the spectrum of disciplines in the arts, humanities and social sciences. In addition, we host around 80 Centres and Institutes.

We celebrate the breadth of research approaches, methods and themes across Schools and disciplines, and recognise that this implies the need for diverse forms of support.

We want our research to benefit society, through enhancing knowledge and skills, producing evidence and technologies, and fostering critical reflection and debate.

We are strongly committed to supporting our early career researchers (ECRs) in building the skills, research profile, and contacts they need to establish and consolidate successful research careers.

We support our researchers to adhere to the highest standards of research integrity, and effectively meet the challenges of an increasingly complex research environment.

Much of our research and knowledge exchange activity focuses on addressing global challenges, and we are strongly committed to deepening and extending our international collaborations and partnerships to co-deliver these goals.