Inclusive Data Research Skills for Arts and Humanities/Who can potential collaborators, partners and team be?

Collaborators and Partners- getting the team together

Partners, collaborators and team members for data research projects in the arts and humanities could come from many places. They could be:

• Other researchers, within your discipline or from another discipline
• Community researchers (broadly meaning, anyone engaged in research outside of university contexts, who may or may not have research training)
• Businesses
• Not for profit organisations
• Artists
• Students

Like any other research project you want to bring together the group of people who are best suited to the goals and process of the project. Data research projects in the arts and humanities often inherently involve a certain amount of working across disciplines and methodological approaches. This is something to be embraced.

In addition, look at the funders and their funding priorities and then make connections with potential academic and other partners that can boost your credibility and endorse your creative practice. Especially for those at the start of the research journey.

Contacting Collaborators of and Project Partners

Projects often emerge organically, and in those cases, you may already have partners and collaborators in mind. A research project can be a great way to develop a research relationship, build new skills through collaboration or explore a new disciplinary area of research.

One of the best first steps in building your research team is to develop a single-page summary of your project. This should be seen as a working document that can develop over time. It is important that when you are bringing new people on board, you do not overly ‘nail down’ the research project so that the project can benefit from the wide range of expertise in development as well as execution.

When writing this initial one-pager there are a few things to consider:

1. Avoid including confidential or sensitive information in this document; the purpose for this is to be shared; you don’t want to have to worry about it being passed to new potential partners.
2. The documents should include information about what the potential funder is looking for (For example what funding call you are applying to) and the potential size of the project – a partner may feel differently about collaborating on a £500K project v,s, a £50K project with a junior researcher.
3. Focus on the broad research question, methods and disciplinary grounding (lit-review), and demonstrate you already have the skills and expertise to execute the project. If there are gaps in the team, highlight these and how you will fill them
4. Include an indicative work plan or timeline or Gantt chart; this will help the partners know how the project might fit with any existing projects or plans they may have.  

Collaborators

Collaborators will include the people who make up the research team, these may be Co-investigators, consultants, researchers or have other titles depending on the funder. Working on research in collaboration can be very rewarding and lead to new findings and outcomes that might not be possible working on your own. Collaboration can be a great way to benefit from senior researchers’ experiences, and it can be an opportunity to mentor junior colleagues, who may bring new energy, approaches and enthusiasm to a project.

When building a research team a few things to consider are:

1)        Ensure diversity of experience and backgrounds – this is important for inclusion but also avoids groupthink.

2)        Start with contact you may have a relationship with first, or ask for an introduction through your networks, emails out of the blue are often missed.

3)        Think about any skill gaps your team may have, and consider who you would like to fill those gaps.

4)        Work across institutions and geographic areas as this can significantly broaden the scope of your project.

If you are applying for UKRI fuinding, once you have built your team you will need to compete a R4RI which sets out why your team has the skills you need for the project.

Project Partners

Project partners refer to organisations with a stake in the project but not part of the core delivery team. For UKRI grants, specifically, project partners must materially support the project (through support in kind) but cannot be directly paid for by the project. You can generally provide things such as travel, accommodation and subsistence if you need them to attend meetings, workshops or similar.  

As part of your grant application process, you will need to ask your project partners to write a ‘letter of support’ which states why the project is relevant to their organisation, why they think it is worth supporting, and what material support/support in kind they will be providing.

Project partners can help you shape your project, ensure there is a clear pathway to impact and give you new access to key communities relevant to your project. It can be very useful to contact partners early in your process as they may have insight into how to make the project stronger, including making it more relevant to their work and more more likely to have an impact.

When planning your project make time to meet with potential partners as they may have questions or input, and while not every potential partnership pans out for the specific project, these initial conversation can be essential to future collaboration.