We are delighted to announce that Research England has awarded funding to the UKRN team based at the University of Bristol. The ‘Ground-Up: Enhancing Rigour and Transparency in Grassroots Research Communities’ award will run from June 2025 – July 2026 and enable Community Manager Will Gawned and Project Coordinator Diane Hird to build upon the outputs and outcomes of the Community Project which ends in May 2025.
The new Ground-Up project will deliver a targeted programme of activities within and between grassroots researcher communities, the institutions that host them, UKRN stakeholders representing the wider research sector, and other national grassroots research Reproducibility Networks.
The team will expand and diversify the disciplines represented within the UKRN grassroots research communities and establish and nurture UKRN Special Interest Groups. They will develop regional communities of practice to provide peer support for UKRN Local Network Leads and convene national discussions on rigour and transparency in different research disciplines.
The project also aims to develop effective practice in working for improved research rigour and transparency within institutions, including ground-up influence and top-down change initiatives, building on the pairing of Local Network Leads and Institutional Leads (a unique strength of UKRN) and to enable effective practices to be identified and shared by the wider research sector through the UKRN stakeholder group and research institutions globally.