Recognising our ORCAs: Celebrating their Impact
A selection of ORCAs who have worked with UKRNFarewell and Thanks to our ORCAS
Some of our talented ORCAs, who have contributed greatly to UKRN, have now moved on to exciting new opportunities in their careers.
Anna Korzeniowska
This feature is on Anna Korzeniowska, who was the ORCA at the University of Surrey until October 25th 2024.
Anna Korzeniowska, is the ORCA at the University of Surrey.
Anna has had a varied career already, both within and outside of academia. She was enthusiastic about taking the ORCA role partly because it sounded interesting, even if the details were a bit unclear at the time, because it was part-time to fit with her PhD, it was at a university and because, at the interview with Emily Farran and others at Surrey, it was clear that she would be joining an excellent and very friendly team.
Her role within Surrey was split between being an ORCA and a range of other related work. That included: putting on major events; briefing interested staff including faculty representatives, librarians and the research integrity office; running the champions network; and drafting resources for the website. ORCA-specific activities at Surrey focused mainly on support for trainers – recruiting them and ensuring they have what they need. The work was very varied, never boring, if sometimes quite demanding.
Anna had a key national role with the Open Research Programme. She was the project manager for the OR4 project, which is a significant initiative involving 45 institutions reforming how they recruit and promote staff to better recognise open research. As is the case for all the central Programme teams, the OR4 team barely has enough members to do the work, and so the project manager is a vital and difficult role. It was rewarding though, because Anna could see how it directly contributes to a significant sector-wide change that will improve research practice – especially if open research is sensibly rewarded in REF2029. Managing this lean project with very busy academics was one of the things of which Anna is most proud as an ORCA, and its success would be the achievement she would most like to have contributed to in the Programme. Closer to home, she would like to enable Surrey deliver a good range of open research training.
As if all this were not enough, she works part-time on research culture at the University of Southampton, and is involved in the ManSpotlighyDogs2 project, which is a multi-lab collaboration to increase sample sizes in canine science and so improve replicability. Next career steps? Anna isn’t sure, perhaps more project management, or perhaps other things. Being an ORCA, and working with amazing and supportive colleagues such as Emily, will certainly help.