Why researchers need more than research skills
How can universities prepare researchers to work across disciplines and sectors?
In this episode, Carolin Plewa, Pro Vice Chancellor – Graduate Research Training, Adelaide University, explains why research expertise alone cannot prepare researchers for complex careers and societal challenges, and shares lessons from their programmes designed for graduate researchers and early-to-mid career academics. We also delve into why practice, peer networks, flexible pathways, and institutional recognition all matter when preparing researchers to create impact.
You can listen to the conversation on our podcast or read the summary below:
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Summary
Research expertise remains the foundation of academic work, but the environments in which researchers create value increasingly demand more. Climate change, health, food security, and technological disruption cross disciplinary and sectoral boundaries. Researchers who want to contribute to these challenges must be able to work with people outside their fields and institutions, communicate their ideas clearly, and build relationships that can carry knowledge into practice.
Carolin Plewa, Pro Vice-Chancellor Graduate Research Training and Professor of Marketing and Stakeholder Engagement at Adelaide University, argues that these capabilities should be treated as part of researcher development rather than an optional addition to it. Her experience designing programmes for early-to-mid career academics and graduate researchers suggests that universities need to develop confidence alongside knowledge, create opportunities for practice, and build systems that recognise collaboration as a normal part of research careers.
Complex problems require researchers who can work across boundaries
Rigorous methods, disciplinary knowledge, and the ability to generate evidence remain essential. Yet many of the problems researchers are asked to address cannot be understood through one discipline or sector alone. Progress depends on researchers working with colleagues across the university and engaging effectively with industry, government, and communities.
This broader capability reflects Carolin’s understanding of the university’s role. Universities educate students and conduct research, while also helping societies respond to complex challenges, stimulating curiosity, and supporting international collaboration. Those functions place universities within networks of external relationships. The researchers who make up the institution therefore need the ability to participate in those relationships and understand the perspectives of the people they hope to work with.
Our researchers must be equipped to contribute beyond knowledge generation alone.
Adelaide University’s work with Children’s University provides a practical example. PhD researchers deliver learning experiences that introduce children to research and university life. To do so successfully, they must translate specialised ideas, adapt to a young audience, and create an engaging experience. The activity develops skills that researchers may rarely practise in a laboratory, in the field, or at a computer, while helping children see learning and universities as accessible.
The example also shows that engagement skills are learned through use. Researchers become better at communicating across boundaries when they have meaningful opportunities to work with audiences whose knowledge, expectations, and experiences differ from their own.
Confidence turns engagement knowledge into action
The Developing Positive Partnerships programme was established to strengthen the confidence and capability of early-to-mid career researchers engaging with external partners. It has run for around nine years, with four modules delivered over three and a half days across a semester. Participants examine themselves as academic partners, learn about industry motivations and engagement planning, navigate partnering processes, develop their personal brand and pitch, and reflect on what they have learned.
The programme’s strongest lesson has been that technical understanding does not automatically lead to engagement. Researchers may know about intellectual property, partnership processes, and communication techniques, yet still hesitate if they do not see themselves as credible partners.
Confidence matters probably more than teaching technical content.
That insight shifted the programme towards helping participants understand their motivations, communication styles, priorities, and work patterns, alongside the perspectives of potential collaborators. It also brought apparently general professional practices into the curriculum. Time management and the ability to run a productive meeting may not be unique to external engagement, but they help researchers make collaboration part of their everyday work rather than an additional task that sits outside it.
Practice is equally important. Participants rehearse pitches and communication in a supportive setting before approaching prospective partners. They are also introduced to business development and commercialisation specialists, reinforcing that researchers do not need to master every aspect of engagement themselves. Their responsibility is to build and sustain the relationship while drawing on appropriate expertise when the partnership requires it.
Peer networks make development last beyond the programme
Developing capability through a cohort creates benefits that a sequence of individual workshops cannot easily reproduce. The Developing Positive Partnerships programme began within a faculty spanning business, law, and economics. It later expanded across the university, bringing together researchers from health, engineering, psychology, social work, marketing, and other disciplines.
The really big opportunities arise once you bring people together from the various different disciplines across the whole university.
Those connections matter because complex research questions often need several forms of expertise. A health challenge may involve artificial intelligence, education, or behavioural change. When researchers meet through a development programme, they can recognise complementary interests and begin exploring opportunities together. The cohort becomes a cross-university community that may continue to support collaboration throughout their careers.
The programme builds relationships gradually. Participants have buddies with whom they can discuss their development, connect with experienced researchers, and then move towards conversations with potential external partners. This staged approach provides a safer environment for learning while increasing the realism of each step.
Carolin’s team also changed how participants enter the programme. Senior-leader nominations initially produced limited commitment, so the programme moved to self-nomination through a competitive process, with line-manager support still required. Researchers who put themselves forward have a clearer personal investment in the opportunity. The delivery team combines research expertise, university engagement professionals with industry and higher education experience, and a facilitator specialising in leadership and behavioural change. Together, they create an environment that supports experimentation and changes in practice.
Structured pathways should still allow individual choice
Graduate researchers need the same breadth of preparation, but their aspirations vary widely. Adelaide University Graduate Research and Innovation Training, or GRIT, is designed to help them become adaptable and independent researchers who can contribute in whichever sector or role they choose.
The programme covers three capability areas. Enabling quality research develops the knowledge and skills needed to conduct rigorous work. Expanding professional practice addresses leadership, wellbeing, communication, and career development. Shaping the future focuses on collaboration, impact, entrepreneurship, and external partnerships. Core requirements include induction, research integrity, ethics, respectful relationships, and First Nations research methodologies and ways of knowing, while researchers can tailor much of the remaining development to their needs.
We want those who have completed it to be able to contribute to any sector, any role that they may want to get into, wherever they see themselves as making the difference.
The next stage is to make the connection between development opportunities and possible careers easier to see. Graduate researchers already complete a development needs analysis and can draw on their supervisors and others for guidance. However, the volume of available activity can be overwhelming. Clearer pathways could show which opportunities are relevant to academic leadership, entrepreneurship, industry research and development, policy, or community and social impact.
These pathways would guide rather than prescribe, helping researchers recognise gaps and shape development around their own ambitions.
Universities must make development part of research culture
Programmes can create valuable experiences, but their influence will remain limited if wider university systems continue to treat development and engagement as peripheral. Carolin wants ongoing learning to become part of everyday research life within institutions that are themselves devoted to learning.
Universities can strengthen this culture by creating development opportunities that bring researchers together with staff from industry and government. Carolin’s own industry secondment allowed her to apply the university-business collaboration ideas she had researched during her PhD. She sees greater cross-sector mobility as a way for more researchers to understand different working environments and build the relationships needed for collaboration.
Recognition also matters. Institutions and the higher education sector can celebrate a wider range of achievements, and ensure that engagement skills are recognised and rewarded. This requires more than asking individual researchers to become better partners. Universities need structures that give them time, support, incentives, and credible routes into external work.
Looking towards 2035, Carolin expects research and innovation ecosystems to become more connected, with more porous boundaries between universities, industry, government, and communities. Careers may increasingly involve movement between sectors or several roles at once. Research training may also move towards portfolios that demonstrate contributions to knowledge, policy, or practice, and towards stackable credentials developed over a longer period.
We’ll prepare academics as experts who can operate within and drive complex networks.
Technology will alter how research is conducted, but Carolin argues that training should remain people-centred and technology-supported. Systems thinking and systems shaping will become increasingly valuable because researchers will need to connect ideas and people across complex networks. For Carolin Plewa, preparing them for that role means embedding broader capabilities throughout research training and creating an institutional culture in which learning, collaboration, and mobility are expected and supported.
Ready for more?
How can universities equip researchers with the skills and confidence to collaborate beyond academia? UIIN’s bespoke training programme, Impactful Academics, helps institutions strengthen researchers’ capabilities in external engagement, communication, and collaboration. Building on the themes explored in this conversation with Carolin Plewa, the programme supports academics in translating their research expertise into meaningful partnerships and real-world impact.
Stay tuned for the next episode on this series and don’t forget to follow us on your preferred podcast platform!
