Team research pilot tackles dominance of principal investigators

A new team-led model for research leadership is not intending to “reinvent the wheel” but aims to “shift the dial” towards a more inclusive approach, according to its backers.

Thrive, led by the University of Liverpool, is seeking to provide an alternative option to running research projects alongside the traditional principal investigator (PI)-led approach – one that aims to spread leadership responsibilities across more of the colleagues involved.

The initiative, being run in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Advance HE, aims to create a “more inclusive, positive and respectful culture in research”.

Georgina Endfield, co-lead on the project and professor of environmental history at Liverpool, told Times Higher Education that the PI model “works for a lot of people, but not all”.

“It prioritises a traditional lead who is ultimately the person that gains the reputation and credibility. All of those kinds of things flow through the PI, but when you think about a typical large research project, there are many other people involved.

“What we were trying to do was find a new way of working…whereby we bring in a different kind of leadership voice and think about teams more effectively.”

Thrive’s different approach could give a “voice” to technical and professional services workers, early and mid-career academics and under-represented groups by letting them co-lead projects, said Professor Endfield, Liverpool’s associate pro vice-chancellor for the research environment and postgraduate research.

She added that there was a “lot of appetite”, given studies had shown the benefits of team-based research and that it leads to an improvement in results.

Thrive, launched in September 2023 with a two-year funding commitment, has developed a set of “team convening principles” including identifying appropriate expertise, establishing collective leadership, designing inclusive governance, identifying ways to embed development for all, and engaging in reflexive practice.

“It brings different voices to the fore,” said Professor Endfield. “It leads to a positive research culture in teams, and that’s a great thing. There’s lots of things that we’re testing and piloting, so it is experimental.”

The team principles are also designed to avoid one person leading the project in a more informal way – which the team see as one of the big challenges to its adoption in practice.

“Some of the things that we learned through Covid [are] that resilience can come through being based in teams, and people can work best when they’re bouncing ideas off each other,” said Professor Endfield.

“We’re not reinventing the wheel. We’re shifting the dial as opposed to changing the world with what we’re trying to do here.”

Projects looking to pilot the new model are being invited to respond to a live funding call with the AHRC, which is open until the end of January.

Jaideep Gupte, director of research, strategy and innovation at the AHRC, said the project has the potential to “radically reconfigure how projects are led across the whole research and innovation sector” and can lead the way “towards more open, inclusive and diverse research leadership”.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com