Strategy
Our vision is to be a university “that places research excellence and innovation at the heart of our mission”. We work by one guiding principles:
“Our research, including those crossing traditional boundaries, is central to our learning community, enhancing the quality of our programmes and serving the needs of society in a transformational way.”
Alongside curiosity-driven research, De Montfort University value pedagogic and applied research, artistic and professional practice, academic and intellectual creativity, research-informed-teaching and teaching-informed-research.
Research aims
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Become a research-rich university across all of our areas by 2015 and research-led in selected areas by 2020.
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Offer enhanced support for research through mentoring and capacity building activities.
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Steadily increase the number of postgraduate research students over the next five years, working towards the position that all research active members of staff have an opportunity to supervise to completion students in their field.
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Become known for our community-engaged research.
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Establish clear outcome-focused research partnerships with each of the region’s research-focused institutions, and where appropriate, nationally.
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Increase international links to ensure that they are outcome-focused research partnerships.
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Double the percentage of academic staff submitted to REF 2020.
De Montfort University remain committed to a programme of not only expanding our research base but also deepening our research interventions, so that we are:
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Undertaking more ambitious, innovative and rigorous research;
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Engaging proactively with public debates;
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Increasing the impact of our work, locally, regionally, nationally and globally.
How we will support these aims
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Facilitate a competitive university research leave scheme as well as faculty-based and managed schemes for research support;
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Access to funds to support innovation (through, for example, the Revolving Investment Fund and the Higher Education Innovation Fund);
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Dedicate funds for Early Career Researchers (ECR) to ensure a smooth transition into academic life;
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Research will be championed by the Research Development Office
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Our Post Graduate Research Students will be supported via our Graduate School
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Ensuring continued development of our special collections, research archives with ongoing investment in information sources to underpin our research and scholarly activity;
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Making certain appropriate discussions around research form part of our annual appraisal processes, leading, where appropriate, to dedicated quality research time articulated in individual workloads.
Our new strategy is bearing fruit, evidenced through the expansion of grant income, improved success rates in funding bids, increased research student recruitment (especially in international markets), and a sense of confidence and momentum within our research community.
To find out more about research at DMU email research@dmu.ac.uk|