Professor Bill Spence Vice-Principal (Research)
Queen Mary’s character has been built from the commitment to the progressive and inclusive values of education and research embodied in its predecessors – the People’s Palace (1887), Westfield College (1882), St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College (1822) and England’s first medical school at the London Hospital (1785). These values underpin our approach to research today.
Our values and aims with regard to research are simple – our mission depends on the freedom of our staff and students to pursue and share knowledge within the context of promoting an open, enquiring, educated and tolerant society, recognizing that this fosters the progress of research and benefits society as a whole. We are dedicated to hiring the best and the brightest, and giving them the support and resources that they need. Finally, we are committed to developing our researchers’ careers and to promoting equality and diversity at all levels.
These are enduring principles. Yet we must also recognise an ever-changing external research environment, which is currently characterised by decreasing research support in many areas, a concentration of funding for larger consortia and collaborations, a new focus on the impact of research, and rapid growth of national and international competitors. Our ambitions within this context are straightforward – we must ensure that our researchers have the support that they need to pursue new opportunities within this environment.
Our new research strategy was launched in 2014 as part of a new Queen Mary strategy. It incorporates the enduring themes of our current approach, but with a renewed assessment of the changing external environment and the new challenges and opportunities that it offers, as well as taking account of the significant advances made at Queen Mary in the past few years.
Bill Spence Vice-Principal (Research)