Community as an Enabler of Scientific Progress and Innovation

Project Summary

Ask a scientist how progress is made and they will likely answer: more funding, better facilities, increased data, and improved analysis techniques. Almost none will mention potentially the most powerful driver: community. Community is that hypothetical melting pot of ideas and innovation, the enabling of many minds to address the key questions to make significant progress. The word hypothetical is emphasised here because the project team believe the reality falls short of this ideal, leaving huge potential for significant advancement of progress through better enabling of communities.

Currently most scientific meetings are a “show and tell” event where people present results, have some nice discussions, and wait for the next meeting; pleasant for the individual but not the most effective way to make scientific progress! In this project, the investigators aim to optimise the role that community can have in driving forward progress and innovation, drawing on expertise from sociology, physics, philosophy, anthropology, and business. Specific objectives are to develop a better understanding of how knowledge in different fields is shaped by communities and to discuss and disseminate through facilitated workshops, peer-review articles, and the development of practical toolkits and tutorials to devise key principles and approaches to optimise progress and innovation.

Ambition:

The aim of the project is to investigate the role of communities as drivers of scientific progress with the key objective to enable better community engagement to unlock more effective and efficient scientific progress and innovation.  The team seeks to identify the appropriate tools and methods required to understand the state and development of scientific communities and how the structure and characteristics of these communities shapes their ability to preserve and expand knowledge.

1. To develop a better understanding of how knowledge in specific fields is shaped by communities.

2. To develop a toolkit that can be used by scientific societies, research funders, researcher managers, and academics to better understand specific scientific communities and to organise productive scientific meetings that efficiently lead to scientific progress.

Term:

Michaelmas 2026

Activities and Events:

To be updated.