Why Southampton reorganised its research office to win more European funding

The University of Southampton reorganised its European research office three years ago. Sue Edwards, head of the research and innovation services’ EU team, describes the impact of turning things around.

Southampton is a research-intensive university across many disciplines, with a research income of more than £102 million in 2012-13, of which 14.6 per cent (£14.9m) is from the European Union. This has grown over the years and equates to 170 per cent of Southampton’s research income from Europe in the first year of the Framework 7 Programme.

The 2013 Framework 7 Monitoring Report ranked Southampton 17th out of all European higher-education organisations for the number of Framework 7 projects it has engaged in. At the date of writing, the Framework 7/Horizon 2020 portal listed 325 projects that were active, or in negotiation, for Southampton.