Cardea aims to develop Research Managers (RM) who strengthen Europe's R&I excellence through a diverse set of support roles and responsibilities. Research management as a profession is almost invisible from policy, career progression and tenure opportunities across Europe. Also, there is little consistency between countries, funders, policy makers and individual institutions. Cardea develops supports to address this inequality. Based on the results of the Survey we carried out in the first year of the project, we are developing a range of solutions, including a Capacity Maturity Model to assess and improve RM activities and a novel RM Hub for networking and training to include a community of practice. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Widening Participation (EU13), and Public-Private partnership actions are at the core of our research, training and enhancement activities. Additionally, the mobility and networking of RMs and those with responsibility for developing RMs are included to ensure the research management ecosystem grows transnationally. Significantly these actions will provide a significant evidence base to advocate the inclusion of RM exigences in policy, and we will target this proactively, targeting 38 key decision-making organisations. Amongst the impacts of Cardea will be an enduring network and Hub that can facilitate RM development and collaboration, a validated methodology to assess RM careers and a well-established baseline against which improvements can be objectively measured. This allows us to develop an RM Charter and offer a Concordat to institutions and organisations that make significant commitments to developing RM activities in a structured, mature manner. The ambition of this project centres on our intention to develop the research management career as a well-defined profession, with a well-characterised profile, skills requirements, career pathways and appropriate developmental supports and recognition for those who choose this career. The ultimate rationale for this goal is to professionally support the wider Horizon Europe missions for excellence in research through professional research management by developing a detailed knowledge base to inform evidence-based policy and to provide collaborative solutions to identified challenges.
