Building a Collaborative Research Culture from the Outset

Helping a new multidisciplinary collaboration build shared ways of working from the start

The University of Liverpool had brought together a newly funded research collaboration spanning disciplines, institutions and career stages.

Alongside their scientific ambitions, the team recognised an opportunity to be deliberate about the environment they wanted to create. Rather than allowing expectations, behaviours and ways of working to emerge informally, they wanted to establish a strong foundation from the beginning.

With increasing attention across the sector on research culture, inclusion and collaboration, the team invited Formation to facilitate a focused conversation about how the collaboration could work well together from the start.

The challenge

Every research collaboration brings together different professional experiences, institutional cultures and assumptions about how work gets done.

Some of these differences are visible. Others are less obvious. Questions about whose voices are heard, how decisions are made, how contributions are recognised and how disagreements are handled can significantly influence the experience of working within a team.

The collaboration wanted to create space for these conversations early, establish shared expectations and explore how they could build a positive and inclusive research culture together before patterns of working became fixed.

Formation's approach

We designed an interactive session tailored to the specific needs and composition of the team.

Before the group session, we held one-to-one conversations with each member of the team to understand their perspectives, needs and hopes for the project. This helped ensure the session reflected the realities of the collaboration and created space for both individual experiences and shared priorities to shape the discussion.

The work began by understanding individuals and their preferred ways of working, communicating and collaborating. This created a foundation for discussions about collective expectations and helped participants develop a deeper understanding of one another before turning to wider cultural questions.

From there, we explored how research culture is shaped by both everyday behaviours and broader structural factors. Together, we considered how hierarchy, career stage and institutional norms can influence participation, recognition and decision-making within research environments.

This included time for the group to establish collective objectives for how they wanted to work together, not only what they wanted to achieve. The session supported the team to name the culture they wanted to build, identify shared responsibilities for sustaining it, and recognise that ownership of culture would need to sit with the whole collaboration throughout the life of the project.

The focus throughout was practical. Rather than simply discussing culture in the abstract, the team worked together to identify the behaviours, principles and approaches that would guide their collaboration in practice, including how they would make decisions, recognise contributions and keep responsibility for culture shared across the group.

The impact

By the end of the session, the team had developed a better understanding of each other and a shared understanding of how they wanted to work together, as well as a stronger appreciation of the factors that shape collaborative cultures.

Most importantly, the collaboration began with a sense of collective ownership over its culture, recognising that successful research depends not only on scientific excellence but also on the quality of the relationships and working practices that support it. This ownership was framed not as a one-off conversation at the outset, but as a shared responsibility to return to, review and sustain as the project develops.

Looking ahead

Research culture is not something that appears by accident. It is shaped through conversations, decisions and behaviours over time.

By creating space to reflect at the outset, the team established a foundation for effective collaboration and a shared commitment to keep returning to how they work together as the project develops. This gives the collaboration a practical basis for sustaining its culture, rather than treating it as something set once and left to chance.