“If you’re not doing research in a healthy and positive way, then you’re not doing it well, irrespective of how innovative or clever you might perceive yourself.”
The quote at the top of this page comes from an an interview I gave for the N8 Partnership (a partnership of 8 Universities from across Northern England) about the benefits of inclusive and accessible research. I truly believe that is a moral obligation to conduct research within an open and positive research cutlure. Research Culture can cover many topics, with most of my interest and work focussing on workplace culture/wellbeing and open research practises.
Benefits of leading a supportive workplace environment.
A core value of mine is that academic research should be performed in an open as possible way, making it as accessible to as many as possible. This covers many aspects including: sharing publications without a paywall, openly sharing data products, performing code development as open source software, using open and participatory research methods, and performing all research ethically.
I've been trying to improve this in both my astrophysics research (see this blog post from 2021: https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/opening-research/2021/03/) and my data sonification research. Working with such methods in data sonification led to me becoming the overall winder of Newcastle University's Open Research Awards in 2024: 'An Open Approach to Engaging with Data through Sound'.
I'm now one of Newcastle's Open Research Champions. In this role I advocate for Open Research practises, and am a point of contact for those who want support in employing them. For example, I have organised workshops on Open Data within my department.