Periodic Reporting for period 2 - TLRH-VRF COFUND (Trinity Long Room Hub Visiting Research Fellows COFUND programme)
Período documentado: 2018-06-01 hasta 2020-10-31
The Trinity Long Room Hub, the Arts and Humanities research institute in Trinity College Dublin has operated a fellowship programme since 2010. Fellows were restricted to an average fellowship period of three months which did not really leave sufficient time for deepening fellow's competences or networks nor for the undertaking of a significant research project while they were here. These short periods of time were also not really conducive to fellows with family obligations and it attracted senior scholars who were in a more financially secure situation. The fellowship programme was not closely aligned to the interdisciplinary focus of the Trinity Long Room Hub.
The specific objectives for this cofund fellowship programme were:
• To offer 9 excellent experienced researchers from across the Arts and Humanities an opportunity to spend a fellowship of 12 months duration at Trinity College Dublin’s Arts and Humanities Research Institute;
• To attract high quality international researchers from Europe and all over the world via more attractive employment conditions including an employment contract and via wide and rigorous promotion of the calls while open
• To integrate appointed fellows in the research activities of Trinity’s 5 Arts and Humanities led research themes
• To provide fellows with training and networking opportunities that will enhance their career development potential
• To identify the relevance of their work for other sectors outside academia including the public (via the inclusion of a secondment element in the programme and via participation in the public engagement activities of the Long Room Hub) and to provide them with interdisciplinary research opportunities.
The specific objectives for this cofund fellowship programme were:
• To offer 9 excellent experienced researchers from across the Arts and Humanities an opportunity to spend a fellowship of 12 months duration at Trinity College Dublin’s Arts and Humanities Research Institute;
• To attract high quality international researchers from Europe and all over the world via more attractive employment conditions including an employment contract and via wide and rigorous promotion of the calls while open
• To integrate appointed fellows in the research activities of Trinity’s 5 Arts and Humanities led research themes
• To provide fellows with training and networking opportunities that will enhance their career development potential
• To identify the relevance of their work for other sectors outside academia including the public (via the inclusion of a secondment element in the programme and via participation in the public engagement activities of the Long Room Hub) and to provide them with interdisciplinary research opportunities.
- Three international calls for applications were undertaken between 2017 and 2019, with 201 applications for 9 positions from 26 different countries.
-The programme reached out to 792 scholars outside of the Republic of Ireland for the expert review stages, from 23 countries.
- The average gender balance across the three calls for applications was 52% female and 47% male. Of the successful candidates, 6 out of 9 fellows were women, on average across the three calls 48% of reviewers were female.
- 9 world class scholars were appointed at postdoctoral level for 12 month periods from North America, the UK, Turkey, Poland and the Lebanon, with rich engagement with the surrounding cultural institutions and industry and extensive academic and non academic engagement. They worked on projects that addressed deep multidisciplinary research questions about human motivation, identity, expression and behaviour and how these perspectives have shaped individuals, communities, societies and the planet, from medieval times to the present.
- The fellows drew international attention to the richness and untapped potential of Trinity’s manuscript and early printed book Library collections, with 6 of the 9 fellows focused on working with the Library and the manuscripts theme.
- It facilitated many interdisciplinary collaborations drawing attention to other major areas of established and emerging critical research mass in Trinity particularly around identities research, environmental humanities, neurohumanities and digital humanities.
- The academic mentors appointed were pivotal in helping the fellows become embedded in the academic environment of the Schools as well as in the broader activities of the research themes. They provided invaluable guidance in identifying the next steps in their career trajectories and the training and networks that would help that transition. All fellows were successfully embedded in the interdisciplinary research themes to which they aligned their project proposals. The fellows participated in 90 bespoke Arts and Humanities related career workshops at Trinity over the programme, they presented 48 research lectures to academic conferences and seminars in Trinity, Ireland and internationally, and co-organised 11 research activities such as conferences, symposia, workshops and reading groups.
-The fellows became extensively involved in the public humanities focus of the Hub's activities. They produced 37 public facing non-academic outputs related to their research (blog posts, op-eds, podcast episodes, videos, radio interviews among others) which has had extensive reach across social media and the media (with op.eds. in the New York Times, the Irish Times, tv, and radio).
-The programme reached out to 792 scholars outside of the Republic of Ireland for the expert review stages, from 23 countries.
- The average gender balance across the three calls for applications was 52% female and 47% male. Of the successful candidates, 6 out of 9 fellows were women, on average across the three calls 48% of reviewers were female.
- 9 world class scholars were appointed at postdoctoral level for 12 month periods from North America, the UK, Turkey, Poland and the Lebanon, with rich engagement with the surrounding cultural institutions and industry and extensive academic and non academic engagement. They worked on projects that addressed deep multidisciplinary research questions about human motivation, identity, expression and behaviour and how these perspectives have shaped individuals, communities, societies and the planet, from medieval times to the present.
- The fellows drew international attention to the richness and untapped potential of Trinity’s manuscript and early printed book Library collections, with 6 of the 9 fellows focused on working with the Library and the manuscripts theme.
- It facilitated many interdisciplinary collaborations drawing attention to other major areas of established and emerging critical research mass in Trinity particularly around identities research, environmental humanities, neurohumanities and digital humanities.
- The academic mentors appointed were pivotal in helping the fellows become embedded in the academic environment of the Schools as well as in the broader activities of the research themes. They provided invaluable guidance in identifying the next steps in their career trajectories and the training and networks that would help that transition. All fellows were successfully embedded in the interdisciplinary research themes to which they aligned their project proposals. The fellows participated in 90 bespoke Arts and Humanities related career workshops at Trinity over the programme, they presented 48 research lectures to academic conferences and seminars in Trinity, Ireland and internationally, and co-organised 11 research activities such as conferences, symposia, workshops and reading groups.
-The fellows became extensively involved in the public humanities focus of the Hub's activities. They produced 37 public facing non-academic outputs related to their research (blog posts, op-eds, podcast episodes, videos, radio interviews among others) which has had extensive reach across social media and the media (with op.eds. in the New York Times, the Irish Times, tv, and radio).
- We expect significant impacts from the programme in terms of scholarly outputs i.e journal articles, book chapter and books. The 9 fellows appointed between them have 41 scholarly outputs in train, 14 of which have been published: 9 monographs or edited volumes; 27 articles/book chapters, 6 book reviews. It may take a number of years for these impacts to fully emerge due to the length of time often involved in having outputs approved for final publication.
- The extensive public facing and intersectoral dimension of the programme contributed to the building of a positive public attitude towards the researchers’ profession; helping society appreciate more fully the responsibilities and the professionalism that researchers demonstrate in executing their work at different stages of their careers and in their multi-faceted role as knowledge workers, leaders, project coordinators, managers, supervisors, mentors, career advisors or science communicators.
-The programme contributed to the university’s commitment to advancing the ERA goal of developing and maintaining a supportive research environment and working culture, where individuals and research groups are valued, encouraged and supported, and provided with the necessary material and intangible support to enable them to fulfil their objectives and tasks. The experience of implementing the programme alongside the feedback from the cofund fellows on the challenges of doing interdisciplinarity (particularly from the perspective of the AHSS) informed the TLRH’s development of the SHAPE-ID proposal (shaping interdisciplinary practices in Europe) which was funded by Horizon 2020 in late 2018 and is now nearing completion (July 2021). Our fellows fed into the project’s learning case workshops and webinars and our engagement with the UN SDGs and how the Arts and Humanities contribute broadly to addressing these societal challenges in partnership with diverse non academic stakeholders. It also informed the development of the HUMAN+ cofund programme with the ADAPT Centre for Digital Content Innovation on human centric approaches to technological innovation. This was funded, started on 1 July 2020 and the first call is open. This programme will appoint 18 fellows for two year periods and has the enterprise sector involved from the outset in helping identify secondment opportunities and in framing the approach to future labs, training, how we approach societal challenges like technological innovation.
- All fellows were successful not just in their publication outputs but in re-energising their career trajectories and re-evaluating the relevance of their research to wider debates, with all securing new posts before their fellowships finished.
- The extensive public facing and intersectoral dimension of the programme contributed to the building of a positive public attitude towards the researchers’ profession; helping society appreciate more fully the responsibilities and the professionalism that researchers demonstrate in executing their work at different stages of their careers and in their multi-faceted role as knowledge workers, leaders, project coordinators, managers, supervisors, mentors, career advisors or science communicators.
-The programme contributed to the university’s commitment to advancing the ERA goal of developing and maintaining a supportive research environment and working culture, where individuals and research groups are valued, encouraged and supported, and provided with the necessary material and intangible support to enable them to fulfil their objectives and tasks. The experience of implementing the programme alongside the feedback from the cofund fellows on the challenges of doing interdisciplinarity (particularly from the perspective of the AHSS) informed the TLRH’s development of the SHAPE-ID proposal (shaping interdisciplinary practices in Europe) which was funded by Horizon 2020 in late 2018 and is now nearing completion (July 2021). Our fellows fed into the project’s learning case workshops and webinars and our engagement with the UN SDGs and how the Arts and Humanities contribute broadly to addressing these societal challenges in partnership with diverse non academic stakeholders. It also informed the development of the HUMAN+ cofund programme with the ADAPT Centre for Digital Content Innovation on human centric approaches to technological innovation. This was funded, started on 1 July 2020 and the first call is open. This programme will appoint 18 fellows for two year periods and has the enterprise sector involved from the outset in helping identify secondment opportunities and in framing the approach to future labs, training, how we approach societal challenges like technological innovation.
- All fellows were successful not just in their publication outputs but in re-energising their career trajectories and re-evaluating the relevance of their research to wider debates, with all securing new posts before their fellowships finished.