Blog: The role of movements, mandates and community-informed approaches in research culture change

As we move into the next phase of UCL’s Research Culture Programme (RCP), shaped by the previous three years of work, I’ve been reflecting on what we’ve learned - not just about what works, but about the tensions we’ve had to navigate. One of the most persistent? Balancing grassroots movement-building with top-down, mandate-driven delivery, while ensuring both are informed by the lived experience of our research community. 

Movement vs mandate 

Movement and mandate aren’t opposites, though they often operate differently. Movements are organic, voluntary, and values-driven. Mandates are strategic, structured, and tied to institutional priorities. Both are essential, and both are stronger when shaped by those closest to the culture. 

Empowering others as agents of change multiplies impact. It creates a ripple effect that can outlast any single initiative or funding stream. Think of the Open Science movement and what it’s achieved in increasing transparency, accessibility, and collaboration in research. It’s a powerful example of how community-led efforts can reshape norms and drive systemic change. But movements take time. Their outcomes are long-term, harder to measure, and less immediately visible, which can make them a harder sell to senior leadership under pressure for quick wins. 

Mandates, on the other hand, often deliver visible outputs - a report, a pilot, a toolkit. These are easier to showcase and evaluate. But without clear ownership and support, they risk being short-lived.  

UCL is a large, complex organisation - the UK’s biggest campus-based university and one of the sector’s largest employers. Our research culture funding, while generous in comparison to many of our peers, must stretch across a diverse community. So we’ve had to be strategic about how we use our resources to deliver meaningful change. 

Our approach combines both elements. We’ve built mechanisms to empower others - faculty-level funding, grassroots grants, and the Research Culture Community Steering Group (CSG). We’ve also invested in central resources like the new Research Culture Toolkit, designed to support anyone who wants to take action, wherever they sit in the institution. Alongside this, we continue to deliver more ‘top-down’ strategic initiatives, which you can explore on our SharePoint site. 

Why community insight matters 

Beyond scale and sustainability, embracing distributed leadership helps us respond to complexity. Research culture isn’t homogenous - different disciplines face different challenges, and faculty-level funding enables tailored approaches shaped by local insight. That matters. The people closest to the culture often know best what needs to change, and how. Through grassroots seed funding and the Toolkit, we’re enabling action rooted in lived experience. Small grants of up to £2k support ideas that are timely, relevant, and unlikely to emerge from the centre alone. And while large institutional initiatives can set important direction, it’s often the smaller, locally driven changes that are felt more immediately and meaningfully by members of the research community. 

The voices of the research community are central to this work. Through the CSG, we’ve created a space for those voices to be heard - not just to surface challenges, but to co-create solutions. The group brings together a cross-section of the community, and their insights help shape our priorities and approaches. It’s one of the ways we ensure that mandated initiatives are informed by lived experience, and that movement and mandate intersect meaningfully. 

Scaling change that sticks 

One risk we’re mindful of is funding lots of one-off projects that don’t go beyond their immediate context. They look great in a case study - but do they scale? Do they stick? We’re thinking more deliberately now about how grassroots projects might grow into faculty-level initiatives, and how faculty projects might inform institutional strategy. 

This is where movement and mandate meet again - grassroots energy supported by strategic infrastructure. A good example is the Fair and Transparent ECR Promotions pilot in the Faculty of Engineering Sciences (FES). Funded through the RCP and developed with FES colleagues, it’s rooted in the idea that meaningful change must work in context. 

We started with a discovery phase across multiple faculties, then co-designed the pilot with FES to reflect their local needs. It’s now being tested across all departments in the faculty, with plans to scale across UCL from late 2026. 

The workstreams - training, fairer decision-making, feedback, financial risk, and cultural change - are shaped by lived experience. It’s a clear example of how centrally supported initiatives can be grounded in local insight, allowing us to test ideas, learn what works, and build towards scalable change. Early impact includes a 600% increase in ECR promotions applications and positive feedback on training quality and process transparency. 

A shared endeavour 

Ultimately, shaping our research culture is a shared endeavour. So we’ll continue to invest in both movement-building and mandate-driven delivery. That means recognising that everyone - whether you’re conducting research, supporting it, managing teams, or enabling infrastructure - has a role to play. And that includes people at all levels, in all kinds of roles. 

So, as we launch our Research Culture Toolkit, I’d encourage you to: 

• Explore the toolkit and consider how you might use it in your own context. And please share your feedback as we continuously improve it. 
• Start a conversation - with your team, peers, or local leaders about the kind of culture you want to build. 
• Contact the Research Culture team if you have questions, ideas, or want to get involved.