Leading Cardiff academic joins Research Excellence Framework panel

A senior Cardiff University academic is to join a body which helps assess the quality of research in the UK’s higher education institutions.

Professor Rick Delbridge, Dean of Research, Innovation and Enterprise, will sit alongside 13 leading UK experts on the Interdisciplinary Research Advisory Panel (IDAP).

The group has been established to advise the team conducting the next Research Excellence Framework (REF). The most recent REF results were published in 2014.

Professor Delbridge, who leads the University’s development of the Social Science Research Park and is also Professor of Organizational Analysis at Cardiff Business School, said: “I am delighted to have been chosen to join the panel. The REF has a critical role to play in the distribution of research funding across UK universities. But it also signals how research priorities may be changing and promotes the development of innovative practice..."

The panel will contribute to the development of the rules and approach to be adopted for the next REF and will complete its initial work in the summer of 2018.

The REF is a peer review assessment process involving senior UK academics, users of research from organisations beyond higher education and international advisers. The results are used to drive the UK higher education funding bodies’ annual distribution of research funding to UK universities.

The four UK funding bodies are: the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW); the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE); the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), and the Department for the Economy, Northern Ireland (DfE).