Community and Support

Outside the central teams that support the 8 Pillars, UCL has a huge research community and a diversity of teams both centrally and in the wider university that support you and your research

This page, along with our page about Training and Skills, is designed both as a gateway to advice and support across the wider university, but also as a place for you to access communites across UCL. Get in touch if you would like your team adding to our page, would like us to feature your community, or would like to write a guest post for the Open@UCL blog.

Communities and Forums

There are a wide range of communities and forums that you can join to share your research, get advice and learn something new. We have collated a few below – if you are a part of a UCL research community that is not represented here, please get in touch. 

Reproducibility:

• Join the ReproducibiliTea journal club or get in touch at reproducibility@ucl.ac.uk
• or the Turing Way, an open source community-driven guide to reproducible, ethical, inclusive and collaborative data science.

IT, Software Engineering and Writing Code: 

• Take part in UCL Carpentries or investigate the wider carpentries community worldwide
• Join a Code Club like the UCL coding club
• Investigate Academia Stack Exchange, a question and answer site for academics and those enrolled in higher education. 
• Get involved with the UCL Research Programming Hub, they host events and have an online community to bring together research groups who develop software for research to promote sharing, collaboration and community support.

Research Data: 

• Join the Data Dialogues community on Microsoft Teams

Researcher Support Teams

There are a number of School Research Coordination Teams that provide advice, support and guidance on finding and applying for research funding. They also coordinate applications for large-scale funding calls and organise events and training through the UCL Research Domains. 

• BEAMS Research Coordination Office (password-protected page)
• SLASH/IOE Research Coordination Office (password-protected page)
• SLMS Research Coordination Office 

There are also a wide range of teams that are available to support you with different aspects of your research, such as:

Sharing, Public Engagement and Impact

Research Impact Curation and Support team

The Research Impact Curation and Support team supports impact across the full range of disciplines, whether for REF or in broader research communication strategy.

UCL Public and Cultural Engagement

The Public Engagement Unit helps staff arrange events and workshops to engage with diverse publics through training, funding and evaluation support (see video). Linked to this, UCL Museums and Collections help develop exhibitions and events, and the Bloomsbury Theatre provides performance spaces for staff and students. 

Research and Policy

UCL Public Policy team

UCL Public Policy helps researchers and policymakers engage and interact on key policy questions, arranges placements for researchers in government and helps researchers translate their work into policy-focused output (watch video). 

Policy Impact Unit

The Policy Impact Unit (STEaPP Department) provides professional policy engagement expertise and support to help feed research-based evidence into the policymaking process

Innovation and Enterprise

UCL Innovation and Enterprise help and support you in developing your connections with business and developing your research to be commercialised. They also provide access to schemes that encourage connections beyond academia.

UCL Business

XIP is an express licensing portal supported by UCL Business. It provides industry and academia with easy access to software and materials developed by UCL's researchers.

Research Contracts

The Research Contracts Team is responsible for reviewing, advising on, drafting and negotiating all research related agreements for and on behalf of UCL.

Ethics, Transparency and Reproducibility

The Research integrity website details all of the policies and advice you need to ensure you adhere to the Code of Conduct for Research. UCL regards it as fundamental that research should be conducted, and the results of research disseminated, honestly, accurately and in accordance with professional standards. 

Data Protection, Copyright and Intellectual Property

Data Protection

The Data Protection website has a wide range of resources and support for understanding data protection and what you need to be aware of when doing your research.  

Copyright and Intellectual Property

UCL Library services Copyright Team offers information and assistance on a wide range of copyright and intellectual property issues.

UCL Grand Challenges

UCL Grand Challenges convenes and cultivates cross-disciplinary collaborations that explore interconnected solutions in six areas related to matters of pressing societal concern.

• Global Health 
• Sustainable Cities
• Cultural Understanding
• Human Wellbeing
• Justice & Equality
• Transformative Technology

Technical support

Information Security

The UCL Information Security Group exists to help both staff and students manage their responsibilities when it comes to looking after their own and UCL’s information

Research IT

Research IT Services (RITS) provide free advice and consultancy to help you to make the best use of IT when managing or carrying out research. They also support the UCL HPC services and the Research Data Storage Service.

Data Safe Haven

The SLMS Data Safe Haven is available for use by all UCL faculties and provides a technical solution for storing, handling and analysing identifiable data. It has been certified to the ISO27001 information security standard and conforms to NHS Digital's Information Governance Toolkit.

Digital Humanities 

The UCL Centre for Digital Humanities (UCLDH) is a cross-faculty research centre, bringing together a vibrant network of people who teach and research in a wide range of disciplines.