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Earma 2023: AI and funding among top future challenges cited by research managers
Research management will need to respond to changes in technology, society and policymaking over the coming years, the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators conference has heard.
Artificial intelligence, the need for more funding and the complexity of their work were all cited by attendees of the annual meeting as key shapers of the profession’s future.
“Everything is changing” for research managers, Earma managing director Nik Claesen told the gathering.
Several sessions at the Earma meeting in Prague addressed the future of the profession head-on, at a time when it is experiencing an unusually high profile in EU political circles.
As detailed across the multi-day conference, EU policymakers have made the bolstering of research management a priority through Action 17 of the European Research Area policy package, at the same time that Earma is leading on the sectoral RM Roadmap project with similar aims.
Short vs long term
Stephane Berghmans, the European University Association director of research and innovation, suggested that in the short term the profession would need to respond to policy priorities including foreign interference and European autonomy from world powers, as well as technological changes such as in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.
His views were reflected in a poll of attendees (results pictured), in which respondents flagged AI as one of the biggest challenges for the future development of research management, alongside funding and the complexity of the role.
But in the longer term, the profession will need to respond to broader changes in society, namely ageing populations and climate-induced migration, Berghmans suggested, with implications for research managers’ engagement with the changing constituents of academia.
“Lifelong learning is potentially going to become the main reason why we educate,” he said of ageing. He added, in relation to migration, that “universities have shown how well they can cope with migration with the war in Ukraine, but I think this will [be as] nothing in terms of dimension with what’s coming with the climate migration”.
Seeking society
Lidia Borrell-Damián, secretary-general of the Science Europe association of research funders and performers, said that research itself was undergoing a shift towards paying greater attention to its societal purpose, and research management would need to “move with the shift”.
“It’s a continuous assessment of the mission of research management, to see how we can hook in all the development in the research sector,” she said.
Experienced research managers Debra Schaller-Demers of New York University in the United States and Mark Hochman, now a consultant based in Australia, also predicted that the profession would need greater flexibility and resilience to respond to new technologies such as remote working and changing societal norms.
But Hochman insisted that efforts to better define the profession, such as through Action 17 and RM Roadmap, were making the situation more complicated than it needed to be.
He said it boils down to: “We help research happen.”