Q&R24 conference for sharing experiences and reflection

“The conference marks the end of the Q&R24 evaluation. It also marks the beginning of the work to take advantage of the results and recommendations from both the disciplinary domain-driven/faculty-driven evaluations, and the two University-wide themes that were evaluated: research infrastructure, and multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research. We hope that the conference will be an opportunity to share experiences, provide a boost for the work following the evaluation, and also be an opportunity to reflect on its implementation. It's also a great opportunity to bring the University together.”

What are you looking forward to most on that day?
“I think it will be an inspiring day with the entire University management in place to participate in a forward-looking discussion with our researchers, academic leaders, support functions, and others about the University’s research activities. The disciplinary domains and the faculties designed the evaluation of the University’s research and research environments themselves, and this is the first time we have included University-wide themes in this way.”

Can we learn from each other? Are the results from one subject area or research field useful in another?
“Sharing experiences is an important part of quality enhancement. Everything from the development and renewal of research and research environments and collaboration with the wider community (our third stream activities) to recruitment, career paths and career support and the relationship between research and education has been evaluated. It can be interesting and useful to share each other’s results and recommendations, but also to learn about how the other disciplinary domains/faculties intend to pursue this work in the future. Similarities and differences in the actual implementation of the evaluation also present opportunities for us to learn from each other for the future. An important question is how to make an evaluation as meaningful as possible without it requiring too much in terms of resources.”

How will the measures that are implemented across the University and have come out of the evaluation be followed up?
“At the University level, the work will be followed up as part of the University’s regular process for operational monitoring, through the annual reports submitted by the disciplinary domain, and the annual quality dialogue that the Vice-Chancellor has with the disciplinary domains. In addition, each disciplinary domain/faculty will decide how they will work with the recommended measures, and how these measures will be documented and followed up.”

Will the results and collected experiences of the work be shared in some way?
“At the conference, the results of the Q&R24 evaluation will be submitted to the Vice-Chancellor. The final report from the conference will be ready shortly after the conference. This report, along with a summarising folder, will be published on the Staff Gateway, and will be widely distributed within the University. The panel reports will also be uploaded to the Staff Gateway. The theme of multi- and interdisciplinary research will only be dealt with in the final report, as no panel was involved and the theme was evaluated using benchmarking only.”

Johan Ahlenius