Professor Andrew Linn, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Exchange at the University of Westminster, has written a blog for the Times Higher Education (THE) Campus on how universities should focus on people and community to achieve interdisciplinary research.
In the article, Professor Linn shared Westminster’s journey to achieve interdisciplinary research through its establishment of four research communities. After an academic restructure in 2018, Westminster regrouped its previous five faculties and 26 departments into 12 schools across three colleges, to allow the University to “be louder and prouder” about its academic strengths and “tell a clearer story”.
Throughout the restructuring process, the University committed to a clear focus for our research endeavour. While other universities may use research themes, areas or strategic challenges to focus their research, Professor Linn writes that Westminster wanted to focus on the “people” involved to encourage interdisciplinary research. Westminster’s priority was “people coming together from across the university and beyond to share their passion, work out solutions together and develop new projects”.
The University’s focus on people led to the establishment of four research communities: Arts, Communication and Culture; Diversity and Inclusion; Health Innovation and Wellbeing; and Sustainable Cities and the Urban Environment. These research communities work across the University’s many research groups and centres and provide a space for researchers to talk together and share ideas across various academic spheres.
Professor Linn describes the research communities as the “spokes” of the research centre hubs, “making links between groups of researchers and creating a sort of town square where they can meet” to pursue multidisciplinary project developments.
For Professor Linn, Westminster’s research communities offer “something special”. He added: “We have colleagues, including PGRs, who, because of the distinctiveness of their research feel like they don’t naturally belong to any one research centre, but who have found a home in one of the more fluid and diverse communities. And they have brought people together to support research in other ways, via grant-writing workshops, writing retreats, external visits and the like.”
The research communities are rooted in Westminster’s 2022-2029 Research and Knowledge Exchange Strategy which outlines Westminster’s goal to be at the forefront of research and knowledge exchange globally within the four community spaces.
On the success of research communities at the University of Westminster, Professor Linn said: “What is clear is that our research communities have served us well, and I’m sure they will continue to do so.”
Read Professor Linn’s article for THE Campus.
Find out more about the four research communities at the University of Westminster.
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