Predicting the future is always fraught, and the events of the last five years have demonstrated the impossibility of second-guessing it. At the start of 2022, who could have foreseen a government whose ambition was to outlive a lettuce, hot on the heels of one that didn’t meet that challenge? The new year will, however, offer a little more certainty—even if it is a certainty that will result in further uncertainties.
New leadership
The new year has been described as ‘democracy’s Super Bowl’, with over 40 per cent of the world’s population going to the polls, including the UK and US. In the UK, following a flurry of conjecture, prime minister Rishi Sunak recently said his “working assumption” is that the general election will happen in the second half of this year—and it must take place by January 2025 at the latest.
If the Tories return, it will provide Rishi Sunak with the public mandate he currently lacks. Unlike his predecessor’s predecessor, Boris Johnson, he’s no fan of big infrastructure projects, but is a vocal supporter of the sciences, and he will be firmly behind the implementation of last year’s Science and Technology Framework. What’s good for Stem isn’t always great for the humanities, and researchers in those disciplines may have to work even harder to make the case for the relevance of their work.
If Labour wins, there’s talk of a new industrial strategy, 10-year budgets and a ‘pro-innovation body’ to tackle regulatory backlogs. But there is also much continuity with the current and recent governments, including a focus on green growth and levelling up. So my bet is on localism and devolution—what UKRI calls a ‘place-based approach’—continuing to be a priority and, if anything, ramped up by the next government of whatever colour.
New processes
In March 2023 Paul Nurse published his review of the research, development and innovation organisational landscape. It called for longer-term and more joined-up thinking in the way research funding is managed and institutions are engaged.
The government responded to the review in November, signalling significant change ahead, with “a clear direction of travel and a series of short-term actions to improve the organisational landscape”. It promised a more proactive analysis of “future trends and opportunities” through a research and innovation “intelligence function”, and a new £10 million metascience unit to look at the effectiveness of changes to funding processes. It will also seek to draw in more private investment, both philanthropic and venture capitalist, through which it hopes to develop innovation clusters.
So there could be big changes in the way research is commissioned, funded and assessed. This could be given added weight with the long-awaited government response to the Grant and Tickell reviews. The first looked at UK research and innovation, the second at bureaucracy in research, and both reached broadly similar conclusions, voicing a frustration with current systems and ways of working.
The delay in the government’s response has been striking—yes, you can forgive them some time to rest on their laurels after outliving a lettuce, but still. When it does arrive I think it will be in line with the Nurse review—and the R&D roadmap and UK Science and Technology Framework that framed its response.
New relationships
All of this raises the thorny question of the government’s relationship to the commissioning of research. Long-time research funding wonks will be aware of the Haldane principle, enshrined in the legislation that created UKRI, that “decisions on individual research proposals are best taken by researchers themselves through peer review”. While it has steered clear of interfering with individual funding decisions, I feel this government has sailed quite close to the wind, and UKRI’s current strategy and individual delivery plans do seem to be dancing to its tune.
The spat sparked by Michelle Donelan in October last year over the ‘extremist views’ of members of the Research England Equality Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Group, and UKRI’s subsequent suspending of the group, brings this difficult relationship into sharper focus.
UKRI’s chief executive, Ottoline Leyser, promised to investigate whether there had been any breaches of the terms of appointment, with a conclusion likely to be published this year. She is in an invidious position, with many academics already expressing their outrage and withdrawing their work for UKRI. New relationships of trust will have to be built between UKRI and the government, and between UKRI and researchers.
New indicators
The politics of research will be evident elsewhere in 2024. Research England has promised to publish a ‘summary report’ in the spring in response to its consultation on the future assessment of research. One of the most controversial areas is around how to assess people, culture and the research environment, which has a larger weighting (25 per cent) compared to previous years.
The proposals were so charged that they required a separate consultation, and the funder has also issued a tender to identify possible indicators that accurately reflect the strength of an institution’s research culture. More details will be forthcoming in January, along with information on open-access requirements. Expect many, many column inches of commentary to ensue, and work in universities to align with the proposed indicators.
New programmes
It feels as if the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria) has been on the starting blocks ever since it was announced three years ago, but work has been ongoing, with programme directors appointed last year.
The first effects of this will be felt this year, with a consultation on programme areas from this month onwards, and funding opportunities to follow. In the meantime there will be seed funding to “support individual research teams to uncover new pathways that could inspire future programmes or might justify additional support as a standalone project”. It remains to be seen how different these are to UKRI’s existing interdisciplinary research funding programmes.
New horizons
Finally, after months of uncertainty, the UK formally rejoined Horizon Europe on 1 January 2024. But the uncertainty has had its effect on the UK research base, with academics wary about applying to the EU, and universities disinvesting in research support for them to do so.
This should slowly change as 2024 advances, and I predict a scramble to rebuild the infrastructure necessary for developing and managing European research and innovation funding. If you work in this area, your time has come. The job market is yours for the taking.
In addition, we’re now at the mid-point of the framework programme, and thoughts are turning towards what the next one will look like. There’s already significant lobbying by bodies such as the Cesaer group of European science and technology universities and the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities to increase the budget and change the priorities, so expect this to ramp up in the next few months.
Compared with previous years, then, we have a better idea of what to expect in the year ahead, but how that will pan out in practice is another matter altogether. New leadership, and new ways of commissioning, conducting and assessing research, have the potential to significantly change the way we live and work.
Alternatively, all this potential may just lead to watercooler moments when we laugh about a new government that had sought to outrun a cucumber—and failed.-
This article was originally published in Research Professional and is reproduced here with kind permission.
Photo by Daniil Onischenko on Unsplash