Research Strategy 2019 – 2024

Mission

1. Research undertaken at Northeastern University London (the University) aims to understand, interpret, explain, predict, and influence human affairs, in matters ranging from the utterly personal to the thoroughly public, but which in all cases are of vital importance now, at this moment early in the 21^st century. 
2. The University’s mission in this regard is to ensure that University faculty are able to undertake such research, that the outcomes of the investigations undertaken are of outstanding quality, and that the results are presented in ways that contribute to the academic and broader intellectual and scientific communities, at all levels, throughout the institution and beyond, both within the UK and internationally.
3. It is equally central to the University’s mission that its research outputs have an impact on various stakeholders across diverse aspects of society, and that the knowledge which is prerequisite to or developed through our investigations both informs our teaching and is communicated to the broader public.

Implementation

4. Key to success in this regard is recruiting, retaining, and supporting excellent faculty and students who are capable of undertaking such outstanding research, and who are keen to do so.
5. The support offered to faculty at the University comes in the form of individual measures, such as extended periods of research leave, grants to cover expenses, and funding opportunities within the University to pursue particular projects; but it will also increasingly consist in the infrastructure required to undertake research projects in disciplinary, inter-disciplinary, and trans-disciplinary groups.
6. The Continuing Professional Development (CPD) of faculty members and students is also, and will continue to be, central to the implementation of the University’s mission to create and sustain impactful research, and to communicate it to an increasingly broad academic field and diverse spectrum of stakeholders. The University will therefore host regular CPD events covering topics such as creating, funding, and communicating impactful research, generating collaborative, inter-disciplinary, and trans-disciplinary results, and navigating the nebulous domain of public influence. 
7. Library facilities, such as those provided at Senate House, as well as online, are and will continue to be of the highest standard. More generally, resources that facilitate and promote research, such as budgets, computing labs, IT services, and grant writing and PR support will be appropriate to the activities, projects and ambitions of researchers at the University.

Strategic Aims

8. The University’s primary strategic aims are:
   1. To maintain and improve upon its research excellence in each of the academic disciplines represented in the University, now and in the future.
   2. To foster outstanding and important cross-disciplinary research, within and beyond the University, especially in relation to what is known as ‘humanics’ (see below).
   3. To embed students in the University’s research activities and environment in productive and stimulating ways.

Strategic Objectives

9. The University has a number of research objectives, each conceived both as a means of achieving the above strategic aims and as worthy of pursuit in its own right.

Disciplinary Excellence

10. The various Faculties at the University serve as disciplinary homes to its faculty and students, providing formal and informal sources of research and learning support, through human networks of like-minded individuals with diverse interests and a range of specialist knowledge, through feedback on work in progress and exposure to academics and other researchers in the field in workshops and seminars, to the hosting of specialist events on topics of interest within the various areas of intellectual endeavour. At the heart of our disciplinary excellence as an institution is research based and led teaching of the highest calibre.
11. Each Faculty has a Research Officer, who sits on the University’s Research Committee, and who represents the Faculty’s interests in that setting, and reports back to its members with updates on new initiatives or other University-level developments pertaining to research.

Cross Disciplinary Research and Humanics

12. The Ottoline Club is a faculty club named after Lady Ottoline Morrell, who hosted a literary salon on Bedford Square in the early 20^th century. It hosts talks by members of the University across all disciplines and intended for a general academic audience. Records of these talks are produced by the Club’s Secretary, and made available on the University’s academic blog.
13. Further seminar series, reading groups, and events bring together researchers at the University in various more specialist areas of cross disciplinary interest. For instance, researchers interested in issues surrounding the cognitive sciences meet regularly across the academic year, and occasional meetings have occurred, and are expected to continue to occur, amongst social science researchers with common interests.
14. Increasingly, the University will seek to support research in humanics, which may be understood as involving three literacies: human literacy, data literacy, and technological literacy; each being itself an ability to read (interpret, understand) and write (create, produce, articulate) items in the relevant domain. This will manifest itself at the University primarily in two ways. 
15. The University will seek to become a national leader in the digital humanities and social sciences, employing data science techniques and computing technology to address questions of traditional interest to researchers in the various disciplines of the University. It will draw on expertise and resources across the global network at Northeastern University (NU) (e.g. at the NU Lab for Texts, Maps, and Networks and/or the Network Science Institute) to establish itself in this way.
16. The University will also aim to foster research within and across traditional disciplines whose subject matter is the data and technology that is increasingly ubiquitous in 21^st century life. For instance, investigations surrounding information-processing systems, including questions of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data ethics, will be actively encouraged.
17. One or more research institutes, or centres, will be established, and set on a secure footing, with appropriate support, in each of these two broad areas of humanics research during the timespan covered by the current strategy. The University aims to embed these institutes thoroughly in the research ecosystem of the United Kingdom, fostering connections with key stakeholders in the relevant areas, producing research that is academically outstanding, with impact in industry, on policy, or across other aspects of society, and ensuring that the findings are widely disseminated, including to the public at large.
18. The University will also seek to exploit its position within the global network at NU to support exciting and novel avenues for research. For instance, the University will look to provide opportunities for researchers to collaborate with academics at other Colleges within NU, e.g. through the provision of Research and Learning Development Initiative funding, by establishing connections with research groups outside of London such as the Humanities Center in Boston, and by hosting individual researchers based elsewhere at NU during sojourns in London. But it will also look to support the exploration of issues that are of distinctive interest given the University’s own unique position within the NU network, based as it is in London, the UK, and Europe.
19. Finally, the University will seek to foster both individual and institutional relationships with various parties in the UK and further afield in such a way as to support the research activities of its members. For instance, it will offer the status of Visiting Fellow or Research Associate to appropriate individuals; and it will continue to partner with the University Centre Shrewsbury to pursue projects of mutual interest, as per its memorandum of understanding.

Student Involvement

20. Students will be embedded in the research activities and environment at the University. First, and most obviously, this means that teaching will be research led, so that students form a crucial part of the knowledge ecosystem. But this is by no means the last form of student involvement in research.
21. A second form of student involvement comes in the form of attendance at specialist seminars and events. This provides students with exposure to cutting edge work at the forefront of knowledge.
22. A step beyond this, students may become involved in organizing research events, as assistants for projects undertaken by staff researchers, or – as in the case of the Philosophy Society – by taking a leading role in hosting a seminar series.
23. Students are also, and will continue to be, researchers in their own right. Most obviously, in undertaking dissertation projects, they explore the field under the guidance of an academic supervisor; and this remains true, though to a lesser extent, in other aspects of course work under the tutorial system, especially at more advance levels.
24. Students may be hired as research assistants on faculty projects, e.g. to undertake literature reviews or archival work. The Research and Learning Development Initiative especially encourages such forms of student involvement.
25. Finally, the University will continue to support innovative ways of involving students in the research activities, culture, and environment at the University, working with the Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships at NU to do so.

Monitoring

26. The University is committed to ensuring that its research mission is implemented, and that its strategic aims and objectives are met.
27. To this end, Academic Board will monitor the progress on, and sustainability of, measures being taken to achieve these goals. It will do so by consideration of an annual report, prepared by the University’s Research Committee.
28. The Research Committee will prepare its annual report after gathering both formal and informal evidence. For instance, Committee members will continue to speak with faculty and students, both at Faculty meetings and in less institutionalized settings; such conversations will inform the Committee’s discussions and ultimate report. But the Committee itself will also be apprised of such matters as: which researchers or groups of researchers have been successful in securing grants, whether internal or external; what percentage of allowable research expenses have been claimed; what administrative and technical support is available to researchers, as well as what library and other research resources; which research events, whether regular or occasional, have occurred; what outputs faculty have published; what notable impact their research has had; what outreach successes faculty have had; which initiatives have been explored for involving students in research; whether any new Visiting Fellows or Research Associates have been appointed (and, in the latter case, whether any old ones moved on); and, crucially, what the status of the proposed research institutes/centres is.
29. In this manner, the University, its Academic Board, and its Research Committee will work to ensure, through oversight, that faculty and students are able, by means of their research, to push the frontiers of knowledge in the humanities and related disciplines in the manner befitting an excellent academic institution such as Northeastern University London.