{"id":2793,"date":"2026-05-27T14:59:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T14:59:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/researchoffice\/?p=2793"},"modified":"2026-05-27T14:59:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T14:59:29","slug":"on-collaboration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/researchoffice\/on-collaboration\/","title":{"rendered":"On Collaboration"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Justine Kenyon, our Collaborations Manager in the Research and Knowledge Exchange Office, shares her thoughts on working collaboratively.<\/em>
___

Working collaboratively brings different benefits and uncovering what it means in the HE sector can sometimes feel like lifting veils.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the Civic University agenda, which looks to the responsibilities a university has to the place and communities where it is situated, collaboration is a cornerstone for delivering local economic growth, developing key skills, creating vibrant and attractive places, and serving local community needs, Universities UK.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By bringing expertise and perspectives from inside the Academy together with those outside it – across sectors, industries and including lived experience \u2013 solutions to complex real world problems can be developed. This shifts traditional assumptions about knowledge produced through discipline-bound academic research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research will become increasingly clustered around societal challenges and not academic disciplines. It will depend on multi-dimensional teams integrating knowledges from a range of public and stakeholders. Collaboration will be the key metric by which universities judge themselves: collaboration with all sorts of people and communities to deliver the research that they need. Steven Hill, Research England<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Business well recognises the value of working collaboratively to boost innovation, efficiency, and revenue. Universities (also businesses!) increasingly share this understanding and seek to open income streams for research through collaborative knowledge exchange activities such as contract research and consultancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essentially collaboration is way of working together, underpinned by key behaviours and approaches, that should be fit for purpose to achieve goals. The National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement<\/a> points out that it is not always the best approach, for example, when you have a very clear idea of what you want or need and could commission someone to do this work for you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six foundations for collaboration have been defined by Collaborate<\/a>, a community interest company whose mission is to build a collaborative society. These are described as: Collaborative Mindset; Healthy, trusting relationships, Shared Vision and Purpose; Collaborative Behaviours; Shared Learning; Collaborative Infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collaboration counters transaction and extraction. It encompasses co-production and co-creative approaches, seeking to work with <\/strong>(rather than to, for or on). It is not necessarily the easiest or quickest route to achieving goals but is likely to be the most effective for achieving impact. The ESRC notes here the positive effects of collaborative research<\/a> on impact and encourage such approaches. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If, like me, you root into the importance of how things get done you may also enjoy reading The Collaboration Book* by Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tsch\u00e4ppeler. With a foreword titled Smells Like Team Spirit it provides 41 bite-sized ideas for working better together on the premise that, the truth about work is that no-one can do it alone. Even for individual superstars, collaboration is crucial\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

*Copy available in the University of Westminster Library for staff and students.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Justine Kenyon, our Collaborations Manager in the Research and Knowledge Exchange Office, shares her thoughts on working collaboratively.___ Working collaboratively brings different benefits and uncovering what it means in the HE sector can sometimes feel like lifting veils. For the Civic University agenda, which looks to the responsibilities a university has to the place and … <\/p>\n

Read more “On Collaboration”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":802,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[126],"class_list":["post-2793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collaboration","tag-collaboration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/researchoffice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/researchoffice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/researchoffice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/researchoffice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/802"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/researchoffice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2793"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/researchoffice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2796,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/researchoffice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2793\/revisions\/2796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/researchoffice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/researchoffice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/researchoffice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}