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Revised Birkbeck Research Strategy 2024-2030

Our mission

In 1823, the College's founder, Dr George Birkbeck, set out his vision, 'now is the time for universal benefits of the blessings of knowledge'. As it enters its third century, a belief in the power of knowledge and education to transform lives and society for the better continues to underpin the mission and culture of our College, an institution that exists in order to help to break down the barriers of social and economic inequality. 

Birkbeck has a long and distinguished history of encouraging innovative thinking which is combined with a unique access mission that opens world-class research and research-led teaching to students from diverse socio-economic and educational backgrounds.

Research excellence is an essential part of the College's mission and ethos, and our research culture is strongly values-driven. Inspired by the intellectual legacies of generations of our staff, our future vision is to continue to provide a sustainable and open research culture, underpinned by an institutional commitment to academic freedom and the principles of equality, diversity and inclusivity, which offers our research community the space and the opportunities to pursue new ideas, discoveries and understanding.

Drawing upon its central position at the heart of a global city, Birkbeck is perfectly placed to inform and shape public debate and policy in local, national and international settings, bringing together academics, businesses, cultural institutions, policy-makers, and diverse communities. Our research spans the disciplines from the creative arts and humanities to the natural and social sciences and whether theoretical or applied, seeks to engage with the most pressing contemporary challenges affecting individuals, organisations and communities within the UK and across the globe.

Our research ambitions

Birkbeck is research-intensive in all of its areas of disciplinary expertise. It values all forms of research innovation and excellence, promoting curiosity driven, impactful, ‘blue sky’ thinking as an essential part of the creation of knowledge and understanding. Imaginative research cannot be pigeon-holed and the College's researchers will never be expected to identify with a particular research agenda, methodology or approach. A vibrant research culture provides the space for researcher-led initiatives and innovation, and we recognise that new paradigms or discoveries can sometimes be challenging or controversial. 

Birkbeck has always engaged with the great challenges of the time. Our researchers have the ambition to contribute towards resolving the urgent threats facing society, to enhance social equalities and social justice and to inform policy and practice nationally and internationally and to enrich public knowledge in and across our areas of expertise.

In pursuit of those aims, the College has identified five overarching strategic themes which reflect the pressing societal issues our researchers seek to address. The themes draw upon our existing research specialisms and our ambition to expand our research excellence in a creative synergy with our impact and knowledge exchange strategies and our education portfolios. 

These themes are: 

  • Digital, data, artificial intelligence
  • Enterprise, finance, leadership 
  • Health, mind, well-being
  • Heritage, histories, cultures and social justice
  • Nature, environment, sustainability

Acting as broad umbrellas, the themes span the work of our faculties, schools, research centres and research institutes. They address many of the greatest challenges and opportunities of our times as well as engaging with some of the fundamental questions about human societies from the ancient world to the present. Spanning the arts, humanities, natural and social sciences, they are intended to stimulate new, more diverse and deeper interdisciplinary conversations and activities. Our faculties, schools, research centres, research institutes and individual researchers often have multiple points of interaction with the different themes and have the freedom to decide on their points of engagement as part of developing their own research agendas and strategies.

A creative and sustainable research environment requires institutional leadership and an approach that gives the freedom and opportunity, both individually and collectively, for all researchers to pursue their goals. In working towards the fulfilment of our ambitions, we will build on distinctive and long-established principles and practices which underpin our research mission and culture.

Our aim is to achieve research excellence in all of our disciplinary areas and to nurture a vibrant and sustainable research environment and culture that allows all of our researchers to maximise their potential. In order to attain those goals, we have set the following areas that are at the heart of our research culture and embedded within our five themes (below), reflecting our broader ambitions to contribute to the good of society.

Equality, diversity and inclusion

  • Reinforce and develop equality, diversity and inclusion within our research culture and environment.
  • Birkbeck is proud of its research community, defined in the broadest sense and encompassing academic and research staff, technicians, as well as professional service colleagues and students, and we recognise the contribution for all those involved in research. The College provides professional and career development support, training and opportunities for all of its staff at every stage of their career. Every member of academic and research staff can draw upon the support of mentors and mechanisms for career development. We are no less committed to providing professional and career development pathways for our professional services colleagues and PGR students. 
  • All members of our community, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, race, religion or disability, are respected equally and have the freedom and confidence to pursue their research on an equal basis. Birkbeck expects all of its research active staff to produce world leading and internationally excellent research, to be returned in the REF and to pursue their research in a manner commensurate with their career stage and other professional commitments. 
  • Scientific breakthroughs and new discoveries and understanding, in whatever field, do not follow a timetable, and Birkbeck recognises that excellent research requires dedicated time for thought and exploration. The College will continue to ensure equitable and transparent provision of dedicated research time and sabbaticals through its workload model in addition to research time which is funded by external grants. 
  • We aim to achieve diversity in recruitment, promotion and reward and to foster an inclusive and collaborative culture where all researchers feel at ease. We will continue to build and retain a diverse research workforce who will collaborate on nurturing and sustaining an inclusive, ethical and creative research environment that supports the mental health/well-being of colleagues across their academic careers from PGR to Professor. The College is committed to achieving Athena Swan accreditation at both institutional and faculty levels by 2027 and to meeting its existing obligations to the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers as demonstrated through the HR Excellence in Research Award.
  • Expand, diversify and further integrate our postgraduate students and early career researchers within our research community and to further support collegiality.
  • A sustainable research environment requires vision and leadership as well as the careful nurturing of the talents of the next generation of academics. Birkbeck’s distinctive mission and inclusive environment makes it an ideal environment for nurturing the next generation of researchers. 
  • We will ensure that postgraduate students and early career researchers are provided with an environment that allows them the space and opportunity to connect with one another and for their talents to flourish.
  • Postgraduate students are a vital part of our research culture and Birkbeck looks to expand its postgraduate numbers, increase the visibility of our postgraduate students within our academic community and to broaden the sources of funding to which they have access.
  • We are proud of our Graduate Research School and will seek to enhance its role as the central hub for both generic and specialised training and a focal point for social and intellectual exchange. Enabling our postgraduate students to propose and lead bespoke training and academic events that meet their needs is crucial. 
  • In line with its mission as an inclusive university, Birkbeck aims to diversify its recruitment of doctoral students building on the success of our Diversity 100 studentship competition. Recognising that most postgraduate students will go on to pursue careers outside of academia, we will further develop training and support and draw upon the knowledge and experience of our unique alumni and wider networks to help them succeed in a global employment market. Where appropriate, Birkbeck encourages its postgraduate students to gain teaching experience and as part of its commitment to their career development it provides support for those who wish to obtain relevant accreditation.  
  • Alongside doctoral students, early career researchers are an integral part of the Birkbeck community across our research centres and research institutes as well as faculties and schools. 
  • We are determined to increase the range and number of post-doctoral fellows, expanding on our successful practice of holding open competitions to select the strongest applications to put forward to funding competitions which are best matched to the ambitions and interests of the candidate. 
  • We will further reinforce and broaden our research and enhance its vitality and sustainability through a strategy of appointing talented early career academics, who are passionate about their research, and by providing a stimulating and supportive environment for them to progress their careers. Early career researchers need support as they gain experience, and in addition to a dedicated mentor we provide further bespoke support appropriate to their experience at all relevant stages of the research process. 
  • We recognise the need to provide the research time and resources to enable early career researchers to apply for grants, produce outputs and build networks to establish themselves in the wider academic community. To support them in doing this, we will continue to deliver initiatives which have been proven to be effective, such as our grant factory, research support allowances, a dedicated strand in our Research Innovation Fund alongside diverse faculty and school initiatives. We will also look to develop new initiatives in response to need and to seize suitable opportunities when they present themselves, as we did recently with the Wellcome Institutional Funding for Research Culture. 

Sustainability

  • Increase and diversify our external research income and infrastructure.
  • Research requires access to resources and infrastructure and Birkbeck is home to a state-of-the-art, fully automated Krios cryo-electron microscope, the Baby and Toddler Labs pioneering research in the study of brain and cognitive development as well as The Peltz Gallery, performance spaces and Birkbeck Cinema which support our world-leading research in the creative arts. The College will continue to develop new capital projects to provide the necessary infrastructure (buildings, laboratories, equipment and computational resources - from investment in high performance computing technology to software licenses) for large scale and/or expensive specialist research, while seeking to capitalise on our existing collaborations with partners in the UK and internationally. 
  • Birkbeck encourages and supports all of our academics to seek both internal and external grants to pursue their research, produce outputs, disseminate their findings and engage with stakeholders. Successful research requires long-term support to take a project from inception to impact. Over the next five years, we will work to increase and diversify our research grant income with the ambition of ensuring that all of our disciplinary areas are able to secure external funding in line with, or above, benchmarked targets. To achieve those goals, we will enhance our internal research support and broaden the range and expertise of our Research Office, which will work with individual researchers and groups, both pre- and post-award, to develop and deliver projects, from small seed funding to major collaborative awards. We aim to be agile in our response to new challenges (as exemplified by our response to Covid-19) and to encourage innovative approaches, understanding that not all research projects will succeed and that an element of risk is an intrinsic part of the research process. 
  • Success depends upon a broad portfolio of funders, both nationally and internationally. To ensure the highest quality of applications, the Research Office and College Research Committee closely monitors success rates. The College provides an infrastructure of rigorous peer review at school, faculty and college level, ensuring quality applications, high success rates and effective revision and resubmission of initially unsuccessful projects. 
  • Ensure environmental sustainability is fully embedded in our research culture.
  • At Birkbeck, we fully accept our institutional responsibility to support the country as it works towards its net zero ambitions, and that this will only be achieved if we, as an institution and as a nation, encourage rapid and ambitious action. The College recognises its duty to develop a research culture that develops good research practice and embeds a culture of environmental sustainability in research, including but not limited to duties described in the Concordat for the Environmental Sustainability of Research and Innovation Practice.
  • To play our part, we will ensure environmental sustainability is embedded across our strategies and policies and that this is then reflected in our decision making. We will work with partners across the sector to support change which embeds environmental sustainability into research practice and allows our researchers to carry out research activities in an environmentally sustainable way. We will achieve these aims through continuous improvement methodologies and working with the sector to share best practice. 
  • We will develop approaches to ensure that the analogue and digital infrastructure we create, fund or provide aligns with our organisational sustainability strategies, recognising the need to balance the environmental impacts associated with new infrastructure against the carbon footprint and recycling burden associated with replacing older infrastructure, and to maximise the use of existing infrastructure wherever feasible. 
  • We will prioritise sustainability considerations (including the mitigation or avoidance of environmental impacts) over basic cost considerations in financial decision making about research in line with the College’s carbon management plan and as the college moves towards its sustainable procurement framework.
  • We recognise the need for our researchers to become climate conscious about the travel they undertake and to address carbon emissions from travel for research purposes. In our internal funding competitions, we will proactively encourage our researchers to consider hybrid options and to prioritise shorter trips wherever possible. 
  • We will develop robust approaches to report the environmental impact of our research using recognised procedures, and we will report this activity openly and transparently once these methodologies have been developed. This reporting will include any solutions we find to help address the environmental challenges associated with research. 

Interdisciplinarity

  • Broaden and deepen the range of our interdisciplinary research and support collaboration.
  • Birkbeck is one of the smallest multi-faculty universities in the UK. Since 2023, following a restructure, there are three faculties (Humanities and Social Science; Business and Law; and Science) and eight schools, each with a broad disciplinary range. Our small size puts interdisciplinarity at the heart of our research culture and actively encourages cross-disciplinary dialogue and collaboration. Interdisciplinarity at Birkbeck leads to novel and collaborative approaches that break out of rigid silos of ideas or methods. We look to work with multiple academic and non-academic partners to transcend disciplinary and institutional boundaries to produce results that would otherwise be unachievable.
  • We are determined to build on the impetus provided by our new structure to develop broader and deeper interdisciplinary collaborations, and to take advantage of the synergies provided by our five themes to facilitate new conversations and shared aims in order to develop grant applications, publications and other activities across schools and faculties as well as more broadly with partners in the UK and beyond. 
  • Our research institutes and centres are all inherently interdisciplinary and form bridges between schools and faculties, while drawing upon the expertise of national and international academic and external partners. Through their activities our research institutes and research centres act not only as beacons for the dissemination of our research, but also support our researchers to host and build future collaborations both with individuals, through our honorary research fellowship and visiting professorship schemes, and through working with groups of researchers from our national and international networks.
  • Our location at the heart of London’s academic quarter has led to many fruitful, cross-institutional, interdisciplinary collaborations with our near neighbours, including the Bloomsbury Research Committee programme of joint PhD studentships and supervisions with our partners London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the Royal Veterinary College, SOAS and the Institute of Education (UCL), as well as joint academic appointments and REF returns with UCL in biological sciences and earth systems and environmental science. However, many of our collaborations involve partners far beyond our immediate geographical proximity and we shall also seek to further strengthen our links with other universities, including through Doctoral Training Partnerships and their successors.

International Collaborations

  • Raise our international research profile and strengthen our collaborative networks.
  • The great global challenges facing humanity are on a scale that is beyond the capacity of a single discipline or institution to solve. Addressing them will require solutions and active partnerships beyond national boundaries.
  • All of Birkbeck's schools and faculties have established research networks and collaborations with global reach. It is our goal to broaden and deepen our international research networks with academic and non-academic stakeholder networks that share our values, helping to set new research and policy agendas and respond to global challenges. We intend to raise our international profile as represented in the QS World University rankings and other markers of research excellence, and to learn from, and contribute to, best practice in research internationally. 
  • In line with its mission, Birkbeck, as an inclusive university, will work to break down boundaries and make research on an international scale accessible and sustainable. Birkbeck welcomes students and academics from across the globe, recognising their immense contribution to research as well as to the UK’s wider society, culture and economy. Our faculties, schools, institutes and centres convene, host and participate in international conferences and scholarly gatherings and welcome doctoral students and visiting scholars, entrepreneurs, writers and artists in residence from all seven continents. We are proud of our status as a University of Sanctuary and we will continue to work with our international partners to host threatened or exiled academics within our community. 

Social responsibility

  • Disseminate our research through knowledge exchange, impact and public engagement to the benefit of individuals, communities and society.
  • Birkbeck’s researchers from across the disciplinary spectrum provide the knowledge and expertise to inform and shape public debate, to promote research that makes a difference to individuals, communities and practitioners and businesses, and to influence policy and policy-makers whether locally, nationally or globally. We are determined to further leverage our central London location to maximise contacts with policy-makers and the media, informing and shaping business practices, public policy and debate. 
  • We will continue to strengthen our knowledge exchange and public engagement ambitions by using our research to further public understanding and the common good, thereby demonstrating the contribution, value and impact of our research to society. We will build upon both the principles in the Concordat for Engaging the Public with Research and the strategy we set out in response to the Concordat for the Advancement of Knowledge Exchange in Higher Education to do this. 
  • As part of its strategic vision, Birkbeck is committed to harnessing its research skills, innovation and knowledge in line with local, regional, national, and international priorities to develop new and mutually beneficial partnerships with national and international private, public and third sector organisations, thereby generating new opportunities for knowledge exchange activities. Over the next five years, Birkbeck will expand its range of collaborations both in London and beyond, focusing principally, but not exclusively, on our five themes and drawing upon the networks and expertise of our research centres and institutes.
  • Our ambitions are to encourage knowledge exchange, to find ways to mobilise our research for social prosperity, to grow new and sustainable sources of income and to provide high quality career and professional development opportunities for students and staff. We will recognise and reward the importance of knowledge exchange, entrepreneurship, innovation, commercial activities and consultancy in our promotion criteria and career development and training provision.
  • Ensure research is undertaken ethically and with integrity.
  • Birkbeck upholds the highest standards of research ethics and best practice in line with College and disciplinary norms, including in the presentation of research goals, intentions and findings; in reporting on research methods and procedures; in gathering data; in using and acknowledging the work of other researchers; and in conveying valid interpretations and in making justifiable claims based on research findings. 
  • Recognising the ever-evolving nature of ethics norms and the changing understanding of best practice across and between disciplines, the College will engage with the process of developing new ethical frameworks when it is appropriate to do so. Birkbeck expects all members of the research community to undertake research with integrity and to abide by the principles of good research practice, including staff, undergraduate and postgraduate students and anyone conducting research on College premises or using its facilities. All are expected to observe the highest standards of professionalism, independent thought and application of sound ethical principles in the conduct of their research. 
  • Birkbeck’s researchers maintain respect for all participants in research, and for the subjects, users and beneficiaries of research, including humans, animals, the environment and cultural objects. Those engaged with research must also show care and respect for the integrity of the research record and ensure that individuals and organisations are held to account when behaviour falls short of the standards expected.
  • The College recognises its duty, to maintain a research environment that develops good research practice and embeds a culture of research integrity, including but not limited to duties described in the Concordat to Support Research Integrity. Birkbeck regularly reviews the systems in place to promote research integrity as well as having  transparent, robust and fair processes to investigate alleged research misconduct. 
  • When research is being conducted collaboratively, and particularly within interdisciplinary or international partnerships, the College will ensure that there is clear agreement on, and articulation of, the standards and frameworks that will apply to the work.
  • The College recognises that peer review makes a vital contribution to scholarship, and Birkbeck encourages all researchers to consider acting as peer reviewers both internally and externally as appropriate for their discipline. The College recognises the need for researchers who are acting as peer reviewers to be thorough and objective, and to maintain the confidentiality of the process.
  • Support good practice and innovation in open research.
  • Birkbeck embraces the vision of open research and the belief that 'knowledge of all kinds should be openly shared as early as it is practical in the discovery process'. In many ways, our founding mission was about opening knowledge to a wider community and, informed by our mission, we take a very broad view of the concept of open research. 
  • In addition to opening access to research findings, outputs and outcomes, we use the term to embody opening up as much as is practical underpinning data, data sources, and protocols and making appropriate use of open IP tools such as open-source software and open licences. We also use open research as a framework to consider questions of transparency and reproducibility. As an early signatory of a rights retention policy for academic publications and with our award-winning open access publisher - The Open Library of Humanities, which leads open access policy, providing an economically viable and sustainable open access scholarly publishing model supported by libraries worldwide - the College has long been, and intends to remain, at the forefront of these debates.
  • Our Open Research Working Group advises the Research Committee and (as appropriate) the College Ethics Committee on the adoption of College strategies to support open research, developing, reviewing and revising policies relating to open access, open data, supporting reproducibility and transparency in research, and the responsible use of metrics in research assessment. Birkbeck Library ensures and maintains the quality of the College's institutional repositories (BIROn and BIRD), in terms of both suitability and user compatibility. 
  • The College is a signatory to the DORA declaration, has a policy framework in place to support the Leiden Manifesto, and we are considering affiliation to CoARA as an initiative which is fully in line with our mission and vision. 
  • Birkbeck recognises the importance of the principle of public accessibility of research data to the integrity of the research process, and the value of data as a resource both to the originating researcher(s) and to subsequent researchers for data re-use and meta-analysis, in line with the principles in the Concordat on Open Data.