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Target Audience: SBS Staff and PGR Students

Cultivating Sustainable Research Programmes with Quality Outputs for Academic and Public Audiences

Led by Professor Andrew Perchard, Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka / University of Otago, New Zealand, and Birkbeck, University of London, UK          

This series of flexible writing sessions and workshops, in a supportive peer review environment, is designed to take you through the steps of developing nascent ideas and datasets and scaling them up into a viable and sustainable research agenda, including developing grant proposals, preparing publications for leading journals, public engagement and impact tools.

This follows on from recent SBS Meet the Editor sessions offered by Professor Ann Langley (Academy of Management Journal) and Professor Andrew Brown (Human Relations).  We invite participants from across SBS (all levels and academic job roles, including final year doctoral students with clearly conceived idea for projects or publications).

Participants will work through the research process from conception through to developing outputs. Over the course of four workshops, you will informally present your project, hear from others, discuss the latest research developments, receiving feedback and review after every stage. All fields and disciplines in SBS are supported.  Research mentoring by a leading scholar in the field, focused on paper writing and submission, will be a feature of the workshops. These sessions are designed to be open to all who feel they would benefit from a critical research friend.

The first of these sessions will be held as a hybrid event, though as with all of the sessions, we would advise attending in person.  We are asking all participants to commit to the full programme to get the most out of these sessions.

Session 1 Introduction to the workshops and meeting the peer group.

Wednesday 26 February 2025, 10.00 - 11.00 (CW4.06a hybrid)

This will introduce the programme and allow participants to familiarise themselves with the rest of the group.

Session 2 Conceptualising projects, grant capture and scaling up research.

Tuesday 25 March 2025, 10.00 - 11.00 (CW4.04a), followed by unstructured writing 11.00-14.30 (CW4.04a / CW5.06a)

This session will lead participants through key aspects of developing ideas and thinking through the practicalities of building a sustainable research agenda.  We will walk through consideration of grant bodies, developing partnerships and designing applications with viable and desirable outcomes.  We will discuss how to develop the most out of those projects and scale them up through collaboration, including such matters as mentoring and developing colleagues during that process to ensure recognition.

Session 3 Defining the significance of your contribution and identifying outputs.

Wednesday 23 April 2025, 10.00 - 11.00 (SW.1.06), followed by unstructured writing 11.00 - 14.30 (SW.1.06)

This session will focus on participants pinpointing the significance of their research project and its contribution, in terms of scholarship and social contribution, and think about the outputs, whether top journal articles and other publications, public policy documents/ industry briefings, planning impact or public engagement activities (and collating evidence).

Session 4 Developing submissions for top business and management area journals. Tuesday 27 May 2025, 10.00 - 11.00 (SW.1.06), followed by unstructured writing 11.00 -14.30 (SW.1.06)

This session will focus in on submissions to top journals in business and management area lists. It will be of help to those with fresh submissions or wishing to repurpose an article, and take them through that process with attention paid to such important matters as contribution (considering originality and significance), methodology and data, narrative construction, argumentation and findings, as well as implications.  It also considers framing of submission letters and navigating the review process.

Session 5 Building on findings and developing recognition and planning next steps. Wednesday 11 June 2025, 10.00 - 11.00 (SW.1.06), followed by unstructured writing 11.00 - 14.30 SW.1.06)

This takes participants through next steps in terms of ensuring research outputs from projects can achieve maximum impact and recognition (and collating data on that). It also takes participants through building on that to develop reputation, partnerships, and next steps in terms of extending the research agenda.

How to participate:

We encourage those who have already developed ideas or a piece of work to participate in order to gain the most from this programme.  We request that you provide an indication of your idea so that we can make sure you will gain most benefit. Please follow the instructions below if you wish to participate.

Please submit a brief proposal (no more than 250 words) to Professor Andrew Perchard (andrew.perchard@strath.ac.uk) and Dr Darren McGuire (d.mcguire@strath.ac.uk) by 6 February.  In that, please outline your idea and what you would like to realise out of the programme, as well as giving any relevant background on motivations and experience.  You should also detail which disciplinary area you are hoping to target journals in, as well as any partnerships and impact or public engagement activities that you are considering.

Please note that upon confirming your participation, you are committed to the workshops

Prerequisites

Details of the programme facilitator:

Andrew Perchard (He/Him) is Honorary Research Professor at Otago Business School, Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka/ University of Otago, New Zealand, and Visiting Professor, Birkbeck, University of London. His research centres around the nexus between history and business and management studies, with his work spanning such areas as: business-government relations and corporate political activity and under different varieties of capitalism over time; deindustrialisation and just energy and industrial transitions; managerial identity and ideology; natural resource governance, critical raw materials and sustainability; regional development; and state owned enterprises.  He has held grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).  He has published in top journals, as well as being the author of a number of books.  He has advised both private and public sector organisations such as Alcan, the Aluminium Federation, the Black Country Chamber of Commerce, Highland Council, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Rio Tinto, and the West Midlands Combined Authority, and given evidence to Pāremata Aotearoa/ the New Zealand Parliament and spoken at the UK House of Lords.  He is a Fellow of the British Academy of Management’s Peer Review College, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Society of Arts, and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Prior to becoming an academic, he was Head of Energy Supply Policy at the Scottish Government.