The UK’s “amateurish approach” to research leadership, which relies on “trial, error, osmosis and luck”, is threatening to hold back scientific progress, says a report that calls for more training and support for senior researchers.
In a new publication for the Higher Education Policy Institute, Matthew Flinders, professor of politics at the University of Sheffield, says there is currently a “vacuum” in thinking around research leadership, especially how leadership skills can be nurtured across the sector.
At present, researchers generally develop their skills through a highly inefficient combination of trial and error, luck and “structured serendipity”, explains Professor Flinders, a former Economic and Social Research Council board member who reviewed the issue of research leadership for the council in 2020.
