RLUK Research Shift Programme (RSP) | Inclusive and equitable research

about the research shift itself. Uh there are three interconnected interactive events. As I've said, they're running from uh today through to July. Uh it is about empowering um colleagues, but we also want you to sort of share experiences, develop our ideas. We're hoping that some of our speakers today might spark uh some ideas for you. They might give you some solutions. Um, I'm delighted to say it's being co-created with some of our fellows uh and our research catalyst cohort working with colleagues from AHRC and the National Archives. And um we're all about the alliteration. It's about supporting capacity, capability and confidence across the sector. So libraries uh are incredibly important to research. And why is this important for RLUK? It's important because we champion the pivotal contribution that they make to the research process and we seek to bring a greater recognition to the wealth of expertise, skills and insights which we all offer. Uh it's been part of our broader research engagement program. Uh we've run case studies, we've run a number of events, some colleagues on this call who have been through some of our programs including our research catalyst cohort. Um, and this 2021 study is a sort of very foundational touchstone for much of today's research shift program. Our UK is also a supporter of the technician commitment. Um, we just refreshed our action plan at the end of last year and we're really keen to continue to collaborate and work with colleagues in the technician commitment space and with the technicians. But we're also about making an impact. We're about how we can develop growth, skills, confidence, and impact for our individual colleagues. Uh some of whom have already moved on to other projects, have moved on to other funding activities. We want to facilitate and support a stronger research culture um capacity, capability and collaboration that could be with the library and with the research office but also with libraries and our academic colleagues and in the wider sector which is really what we're seeking to do with the research shift program really sharing knowledge influencing trying to do some more systemic change uh across the research ecosystem. Um so I talked already that we're doing three C's capability, capacity and confidence but with research shift uh we also wanted to build in community. We wanted to reflect shifts in research culture and I apologize for this but we did have to shoehorn in inclusivity uh so inclusivity uh as one of our C's. Um and last year's program was focused on defining uh practitioner research, overcoming those barriers and enabling research. And recordings for all of those are available on our research shift web page. However, what I really want to do is to move uh swiftly on to our speakers today and I'm delighted to have um case studies from Lancaster and from Cambridge. And our first speaker is Andy Corrian who is one of our AHRC ROUK research fellows. Uh Andy is at Oxford and he has a particular interest in exploring and bridging intersections in the matrix of technology, collections and experience. He's the digital library coordinator at the University of Cambridge and takes a lead on digital content analysis and engagement. um and through a recent collaboration between the Heritage Lab and Wikipdia UK and andy is also a recipient of an open knowledge fellowship in 2025. His research aims to bring a fresh perspective to underrepresented histories and cultural collections as well as to more deeply consider the applications of the fair and care principles to digitized content. So, I'm really delighted to hear uh our first speaker and how Andy has helped to make research inclusive and equitable. >> Over to you. >> Um, Walking with Constable is a collaborative project um that's practice-based participatory research. Um it's a collaboration between Cambridge Digital Humanities, the Fitz William Museum Cambridge and the University of Cambridge Libraries and Archives. So, all a bit of a mouthful. The project grew from an idea to use digital technologies to take prints locked in a museum back into the landscape which made them which represents them and of which they are part. So it's very unlike a regular library-based research project and um hopefully I think that's where a lot of its strengths can lie. During his later years, the artist John Constable collaborated with a young engraver called David Lucas on a series of messotint prints of his own works which collectively became known simply as the English landscape. This was a passion project for constable who hoped to bring the spot of countryside that was the origin of his fame to the public who were unlikely to be able to visit art galleries at the time. The endeavor has echoes of pop culture and resonates with today's digital culture which presents a new lens through which to reconsider Constable's work as original multiples. Many institutions around the world have impressions of these prints and the Fitz William Museum's collection particularly demonstrates Lucas's commitment to portraying the thing Constable brought most to his art, a deep and forensic experience of the landscape. Elellanena Ling, senior curator of prints and drawings at the Fitz William Museum, approached Cambridge Digital Humanities to discuss the potential of digital methods for re-examining these unassuming prints back in the landscape that made them. We conducted a pilot phase designing walks that could we could complete in the space of a day and which would begin, pass through or end with viewpoints depicted in the English landscape in the Denon Veil on the Suffukk Essex border. Inspired by Michelle Dertto, the aim of the walks was to act as a form of public writing. And we invited people to join us who each brought their own expertise, prompting dialogue between academics, creatives, specialists, and people who worked the land and locals. Together, we explored how to document the shared experience of engaging with constables prints alongside other archive material as a way to rethink the relationship of the work to the land through digital mediation. We took iPads and using their cameras and a web browser could activate digitized images using a QR code like target allowing us to look through these images um into the landscape beyond. Prompted by the images, we looked at we looked at the places we passed and the things we saw or heard. We also captured the sights, sounds, and conversations. Echoing Constable's own use of poetry and history. Outputs included blog posts about a variety of complimentary topics from Constable himself to the history of the land, science and skies, flora and fauna, personal experiences, walking and well-being, and different ways of seeing and representing the landscape. Nothing we did was particularly complicated and technically speaking, it was a very modest digital project. The brief was to prototype a way of taking some images for a walk instead of looking at them in a museum. Today's techsaturated world can create an illusion that off-the-shelf out ofthe-box plug-and-play solutions a fast and easy answer to everything. But with a heristic approach to what might be achievable with the available resources, time frame, skills, and willing participation meant the result was much more interesting. In much the same way as a physical walk has obstacles to navigate, so too does a digital path. unexpected or surprising challenges require the out-of-the-box thinking rather than out of the-box solutions. For example, connectivity, a strong theme with the project, in practical terms meant we didn't even know if there would be any signal or reception out in the landscape. And it's not often these days that we start a digital project with the uncertainty of an internet connection. Another parallel with the physical world is one of access, fences, gates, and locks. Making an iPad believe it was securely connected to the internet enough to let a web browser access its camera was perhaps surprisingly one of the most complex aspects that requires a rebellious and deceptive approach. We used an Android phone to run a simple HTTPS server and publish a local host locally hosted web app with a self-generated security certificate over a local hotspot to make the technology work. Even though our goal was to prototype something, the results of this project have already embedded themselves. The content and outputs are available not only via the project website, but are also incorporated into the Cambridge digital library platform alongside all the medieval manuscripts. We've begun to situate Constable's work in a place where we can and we can begin to understand it within a new digital connected landscape. For example, we can collide art and science by putting Constable's passion for clouds and rainbows right next to Isaac Newton's notes on color and light. You can see a little diagram here in Newton's notebook where he's using trigonometry to try and calculate the height of a cloud. A second phase of the project funded by Research England's Enhancing Research Culture Fund aimed to explore if these methods could deliver new approaches to public dialogue and community-led research and improve access to and participation in research for people from our currently underrepresented groups. The Dead and Veil National Landscape Team had recently recruited a landscapes for all officer called Jenny Moss, who proved to be a key gatekeeper to some fantastic and keen groups in the area. The first group was a class of local school children. A whole class of 7 to 8year-olds presented logistical and creative challenges. So in additional to the augmented reality experience, we planned some field sketching exercises and also recruited a children's author to join us which all helped to capture their own perspectives. The day after our walk, we visited them in the classroom and the author undertook a collective writing exercise with them based on their experience. It proved for some interesting outputs, but despite any reservations and chaos, it was surprisingly effective at drawing out their experience. I was a bit worried the children might not find looking at a black and white print of a constable picture in augmented reality all that interesting given all the tech and kids tech that kids have these days but far from it. They found it really engaging and it was amazing to see how quickly they adapted to closer observation of the landscape in which they lived. One girl didn't want to look thinking it was some kind of witchcraft. One boy even commented on how the breeze in the long grass was creating the effect of waves on water. So I came away with a lot more faith in children than I started with. The next group we walked with were a group from an Ipsswitchbased charity called Phoebe who support who support underprivileged black and ethnic minority women. They were fantastic. Many of them weren't used to spending time in the countryside. So navigating floods, mud, and even a herd of cows all proved very entertaining for them. They reveled in in introducing us to a new word word mazongu which is a bantto word that once meant wanderer and had come to be a derogatory term for the crazy things white people do like walking around the countryside for pleasure. Another group that challenged our usual mode of organization was an Ipswitchbased charity called Swags who support people of working age whose lives have been impacted by stroke. They were incredibly grateful that we were so f so able to be so flexible in our planning as to allow for a wide variety of both mobility and communication challenges. In a way, that lent itself to the methodology of trying to slow down and make a deeper connection to the landscape and each other. Many members of the group kindly reported back that the experience had been genuinely life-changing and so many activities as so many of the activities they usually offered focused solely on the physical aspects rather than the mental ones that so many of them spoke or in some cases wrote so openly about. We were also lucky to be put in touch for two charities that support refugees and asylum seekers in the area. These were quite challenging in a different way because we had no idea who would be turning up, what their situation might be, what they'd been through, or even if they would understand or relate to what we were doing. But walking seems to have this way of making people feel comfortable to talk about things. We consciously didn't ask any of them how or why they were here, but for some, it had been the very first time they'd gone for a walk since they'd walked all the way across Europe and been dumped in a hotel room in the middle of nowhere. So the conversations became very poignant reminding us that we take the activity of walking for granted. Other conversations started up simply because participants would not notice a familiar plant. We all stopped we would all stop and talk about the different names we gave them and the uses we put them to. So it's quite important to take those things into consideration and give them space. Many of them didn't really know what they'd let themselves in for but embraced that and us with gusto. They were heartbreakingly grateful to be given an opportunity to do something and apply their bodies and minds. Many of them were highly skilled or qualified, yet all they were allowed to do was sit in a hotel. The last group I want to share our story of is a group of blind and partially cighted participants. Whilst we were struck by how the augmented experience lent itself to sight, it didn't offer much for the other senses, which are also keenly effect keenly heightened when out walking in nature. Again, this was challenging. We had carefully planned what might be possible with a coordinator who knew the group well. Despite our best efforts, nothing prepared me for how stressful it was trying to get a larger group of people from point A in the landscape to point B. And we only managed 3 and a/4 miles in 3 and 1/2 hours. But we persisted and we were all so keen to see through some of the ideas we discussed that thankfully we managed to identify an underspend in our budget which went straight towards booking another mini bus. The second attempt was much more relaxed and productive and great many lessons were learned by all. Ultimately despite its challenges it was hugely successful and the participants described the experience as truly lifeenhancing. Initially, we'd we felt we'd need a few blog posts to contextualize and explain our method, but embracing the serendipity of our approach. The outputs have become an open-ended discourse, a complex multimedia web through which a reader can also participate in our shared experience. It is the technologies underpinning it it that power this potential the mechanisms and tools the connections to other people works archives and nodes of data that this exposes by threading together constable's story with others from our archives and experiencing them in this way. Participants also tell their stories and they too weave into the story of each walk. All combined each experience is different every time. By collective understanding, we can apply our our knowledge and experience to the physical world of the physical world to the digital technologies resulting in a richer, more human, more interesting part of our lives. So, what did we learn? A lot. I'd really put the emphasis on how you'll learn a lot more about doing this type of thing in practice than from reading about it. You can't have inclusivity and equity without collaboration. You need to work together. It's a team effort. Don't have too many expectations about what the outcomes might look like. Be inclusive about these as well as about the participants. Relationship building is challenging but essential. In situations like this, everyone is out of their comfort zone. So, you need to get comfortable with that so that everyone else can feel comfortable as well. It is challenging, but that's what makes it so rewarding and such a high value thing to do. For example, participant payments can progress equity, but can also be challenging. University admin and research systems aren't set up for paying asylum seekers who aren't allowed to work. A lot of resource, time, and money goes on travel and everywhere and getting everyone to where they need to be. So, you can't just assume that everyone can get themselves to where you need them. It's also not a numbers game. A smaller group can create a higher value experience and output and that's a key factor. And finally, archiving outputs is just as challenging. The way we refer to groups of people as we archive them is hard. For example, an asylum seeker might not always want to be labeled as one in an archive, and a collective might selfidentify with a label, but not every individual of that group might always want that same label. Um, thank you for listening. That's um me done. I'd just like to shout out to my colleagues, Professor Caroline Vasset, Professor Leo Impetit, Dr. Ellen Erling, and Dr. Kate Noble from the Fitz William Museum. Thank you very much. >> Thank you so much, Andy, for getting us going. And I hope you can see the explosion of uh applause across the screen there. Um, what a fantastic series of incredibly powerful uh powerful stories. So, thank you very very much. So, we're going to turn from Cambridge to Lancaster and I'm going to introduce uh Louise and Carlos. Uh, Louise Zambiani has 25 years of experience in working in academic libraries and she's been working in the area of open research in her role as head of open research uh at Lancaster. Um, but her professional interests include open access publishing, providing a support service for research students and academic staff and the development of skills and training. And Louise is currently a co-investigator on the welcome trust funded project reimagining research practices towards sustainable, ethical and inclusive future. Uh Carlos is a professor of history and social futures at Lancaster and his work contributes to the understanding and ways in which we might connect history to the future. And Carlos has led and taken part in a number of successful international collaborative research projects including as a PI of griding equitable urban futures in areas of transition and funded by the UKRI's global challenge research fund a project that is very close to his heart and has helped to transform the lives of communities from informal settlements in Kali Colombia and Havana Cuba. So over to Louise and Carlos and thank you so much for joining us today. >> Same as thank you for inviting us and it's a pleasure to be here. Um so I'm going to start initially just go through some slides and then we can have a a further discussion. Um so I'm talking introducing our welcome trust funded project that um myself and Carlos have been involved in. uh and also as part of this I'll be introducing one of the outputs of the project. So it's the credit toolkit. So a tool for researchers uh aiming to involve and engage communities in their research. Um which is the toolkit's full of information, lots of inspiration in there. Um so the project hanging there we go. Sorry it's just slow. So this project aims to reimagine research practices uh working towards a more resilient research culture. So the project began back in May uh 2024 uh and it's ongoing until the end of October this year. Uh the project um I've included the link here to it so uh you'll have the slides after uh so you can investigate and find out more about the entire project. And that's the the website there. So it's very much a cross-disciplinary project headed by the deputy vice chancellor Rebecca Lingwood at Lancaster. So it's quite unusual in that there is a mix of co-investigators. So academics from various departments that we can see here obviously got Carlos with us here today. Uh as well as professional services colleagues. Uh so that's from research services and the library alongside a developer and software engineer. Uh Elaine Sykes um yeah she's pictured here um so many of you will know she started the project but sadly passed away last year um so I wanted to capture here in the slides as well. So I stepped into the project because of that um just partway through so in July last year to carry on her excellent work that she started. So the project focuses on three overarching but very much interlinking pillars. Uh the sustainability of our evolving research practices. um the mitigations for ethical risks arising from reshaping research approaches and and I and Carlos we were focusing on inclusion. So the enhancement of inclusion in our research community and practices. So as I said we've been focusing on the inclusion pillar. Um so the credit uh toolkit was initially developed uh through a series of conversations across all faculties at Lancaster with researchers undertaking research in the broadest sense. So as part of these focus groups and interviews there are questions asked such as what has been your biggest challenge working with the public or communities? What have you had to teach yourself that you wish somebody had told you or taught you? How have you developed and cultivated partnerships with communities? What is the currently missing in the knowledge base for researchers undertaking community research? And how have you developed and cultivated partnerships with communities? So, there have been other outputs. I mean, I'm talking about the toolkit a bit later. Um but also we've recently launched at the end of April a graphic novel uh about inclusion in communitybased research and the novels called Pebbles and Ripples. Um we we have that in a physical uh copy but uh also we're looking at trying to host that um somewhere. We're working on that one, aren't we, Carlos? Um and then we've also got micro:bits um used as a research tool with user friendly interfaces and low code low code tools. So they're also reusable devices which is really important contribution to sustainable research practices as well. So this is you've got the QR code there for the community research digital toolkit. Um, so I'll just introduce this. Um, and again you can have access to this. I've just taken some screenshots of different stages of the toolkit. So take you through. Oops. So we've got the welcome invites you to feedback on the toolkit. So it's very much uh a work in progress. Um, so it's now hosted on the library website. So we can maintain this once the project finishes as well. So obviously things will need updating. We can add um yeah more up to-ate resources on there as well. So the re researcher would click on develop a proposal and then you'd see the introduction. So a researcher would select whether they previously done citizen science and if they haven't it would invite them then to participate in Zuniverse and reflect um upon their experience as a community user. There's an area to look at definitions of citizen science and participatory research and there are examples of given of practitioner communities and case studies as well. Then we click on get started. So we've got different phases here. So consideration phase. So obviously it's important to consider whether citizen science is the right approach. Um and there's a link to a decision framework here to help with this process. So ethics is a crucial part of this phase um because we've got human participants in the research. There's a link to the research offices ethics website um with an offer of training and suggested reading list. There's a preparation phase. So this is looking at assembling your team and the team roles that you'll need and whether there are any training needs identified as part of that. The development phase um is so that's what's required all the plans uh required to deliver the project. So the overall plan there's an ethics plan um and also the research data management plan that's covered later in the toolkit. So there's a template um that you can download and then you can come back to it within within the toolkit as well. And as with all the other sections there are links throughout for further guidance. So the launch and sustain phase. So this guides you through developing a community engagement strategy with certain prompts and different case studies to refer to with analysis, reporting and evaluation. So participants might collect or analyze data for the project. So we've listed here considerations for data analysis and reporting as well as sharing data sets. And for evaluation, there are links for links to resources on evaluation methods. For legacy, so an impact phase, there are time frame considerations here and whether and how often to revisit the project. So the case studies are listed and then there's further literature and data management. Um obviously this is an area where the library had a strong presence uh flagging important data considerations and again there's a template provided for a research data management plan and then lots of case studies here for inspiration. Um I was certainly inspired by Cambridge's um so we we've actually used um the digital collections within the library um for the transcribing the Davyy notebooks and that was a citizen science science project um using Zuniverse asking for people to contribute to uh transcriptions there. So there's lots of case studies to to have a look at there. And then the final page is the resources that you can download um that I've already mentioned there. So yeah, thank you. I've included our contact details and I don't know I'm just going to stop sharing and then we can enter further discussion and Carus wants to add anything there. >> Um thank you very much Louise. Um I thought that one what a couple of points worth highlighting um on the basis of what this case study is by contrast with the walk-in with possible project is. So the first one is that this was an externally funded project um that actually included colleagues from professional services or research services and the library as co-investigators in the project and that in itself is is is not necessarily common practice um in relation to externally funded research projects. So that's one thing and the second one which I think is particularly relevant to this um to this audience is the creative methods and approaches that we took in order to understand and help shape inclusion and equitability in particular the the role that libraries research libraries can can play in that process as creators of resources for example but also as open access repositories. So the question that you were asking Louis precisely about the graphic novel being made available digitally that depends on the authors the the the two the company that we used uh this for um they want a commission a highly competitive commission arts art studio so the copyright stays with them but then that poses some interesting question for us uh as as an institution academic institution trying to make um um a resource that we think is important as widely accessible as we can and probably thirdly widening participation big part because these creative tools and approaches do encourage conversations in different ways um and allow us to reach out to communities uh who are variously defined as marginal, underrepresented, disadvantaged and so on and so forth. So I think that's that to me it's it's the value of having having had in our case um I guess academics I am an academic but working very closely with the library having had from that from the start and actually application stage made really a very sign significant difference for the kinds of questions that we were asking from the start um and I think as Louis said we're here to answer any questions or engage in the discussion as as we see fit