The strategic priority to foster transformative research and knowledge exchange, with high quality outputs and real-world impact will be met through achieving the following objectives:

Ensure strategic focus and alignment of research on core strengths and strategic priorities, aligned to REF 2029.
Foster research collaborations with industry and external institutions to drive innovation and knowledge exchange.
Grow doctoral and post-doctoral research, including professional doctorate provision.

Ensuring strategic focus and alignment of research on core strengths and strategic priorities.

Remaining true to its founding roots and ethos, a core strategic priority for research at St Mary’s is that which is focused upon social justice and seeks to realise social impact by addressing contemporary issues affecting society. As a Catholic University, a strategic research priority is faith-based research, with a focus on the whole person that encompasses, spirituality, emotion, intellectual, and social aspects. More recent developments have seen St Mary’s strengthen and strategically invest in health-based areas of study, illustrated by the new School of Medicine. Aligned with this, research focused upon health, wellbeing, and social sciences will be a strategic priority for research. St Mary’s is also recognised externally as a leader for research that is focused upon enhancing performance and informing professional practice across domains including, but not necessarily limited to, education, professional sport, and business.

Core areas of research strength and strategic research priorities for St Mary’s are therefore:

Social Justice and Social Impact
Catholicism, Faith, and Spirituality
Fostering a Healthier Society
Innovation and Improvement in Performance and Professional Practice
Community and Civic Engagement

These areas represent both existing research strengths and those of strategic prioritisation. These core strategic priorities remain faithful to St Mary’s tradition, heritage and place as a Catholic University, ensuring it is well placed to retain its appeal to its traditional funders. In parallel, these core strategic priorities recognise contemporary and forward-looking social challenges and are designed to promote inter- and multi-disciplinary research which will maximise appeal to external funders.

Research projects and programmes that align with these core areas will be prioritised for investment and support, which includes both applied research undertaken at the ‘coal-face’ and that which is more theoretical and conceptual in nature which can provide the vital foundations for subsequent application and impact. It is expected that not only will the research being undertaken underneath these banners align with submissions to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise in 2029 but will also inform and shape the broader research and environment and culture across the university. Research centres will map against these core strategic priorities and serve as vehicles to facilitate achievement of the objectives set out in the university’s Research and Knowledge Exchange strategy. As part of this process, research centres themselves will set out supporting strategy and operational plans that will identify to a more granular level research themes and subjects.

Fostering research collaborations with industry and external partners to drive innovation and knowledge exchange

St Mary’s strives to undertake research which ‘makes a difference’ and which achieves impact. Key to facilitating the achievement of these goals is to forge and foster close collaborative ties with industry, business, charity, professional organisations, as well as community groups, faith groups, and non-governmental organisations. We will build these ties in various ways, including events between research centres and applied partners, participatory research, match-funded PhD studentships, and industry-funded post-doctoral research. These activities will be mapped to the core areas of strategic prioritisation (above), ensuring close communication and exchange of knowledge with external partners, and to ensure maximum opportunity of achieving impact from research. Not only does this work towards the overarching strategic priority to undertake research that realises real-world impact, it also aligns with the Vision 2030 pillar of Place, embedding research and knowledge exchange within our communities.

Growing doctoral and post-doctoral research

Since being granted Research Degree Awarding Powers (RDAP) in 2021, St Mary’s doctoral provision has been steadily growing. This growth has been supported by the development of professional doctorates (currently offered through Ed.D., D.Min., and Prof Doc Strength and Conditioning routes), and we will continue this growth through expanding our professional doctorate offering, in line with our focus on applied research. We will also grow our PhD student numbers by actively promoting opportunities for doctoral study at St Mary’s and utilising routes such as PhD by Publication to broaden opportunities for prospective doctoral students. As part of our commitment to fostering a supportive and inclusive research environment, we will particularly seek to develop doctoral/post-doctoral opportunities for under-represented groups in research. This is in line with key priorities in the university’s race equality and gender equality action plans.

We will support our community of postgraduate researchers and research active staff to produce high quality research and undertake research that adheres to the highest standards of ethics and integrity through our commitment to the research integrity concordat. We will also support their ongoing development and the wider research environment through the university’s researcher development programme that we will align to the vitae researcher development framework and schemes such as research mentorship programmes.

We will seek to partner with HEIs who, themselves, do not have RDAP to grow and develop our oversight of doctoral research provision. In doing so, we will strategically prioritise organisations whose values and profile align with St Mary’s. Such partnerships not only serve to satisfy objectives for Research but also complement aims and objectives in the Academic Partnerships Strategy and contribute to the goal of Growth set out in Vision 2030.

We will also actively pursue opportunities to accommodate existing PhD provisions within St Mary’s, using Maryvale as a recent exemplar where this has been employed successfully and contributed to growth of doctoral student numbers.

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