Three perspectives on our research approach

Our approach is centred on people, and framed by outcomes and impact.

Professor Kate McGrath: A really, really critical part of our new strategy is people. People are at the absolute heart of everything that we do from now on, and that’s not just about thinking about, is this user friendly for a person? It’s actually really understanding what motivates someone – what would make people want to do this? What’s the value proposition for an individual? How do we actually help support them to be better at what they do on a day-to-day basis? That’s really important to us.

It’s also really important to think about it not just from a UTS perspective. Thinking about things internally is really important, but actually, remember, it’s all about excellent research that delivers impact. So, that means that we’ve really got to critically focus on, what do our external people need and want from us? How do we create value for them? How do we drive outcomes for them? But how do we do that and show that it’s us that’s really good at this? How do we use our data better? How do we create digital solutions for people in this increasingly data-driven world?

So, we have three framings for our people perspective: We have our external focus, our internal focus, and our digital and data insights focus. We have things that we want to be leaders in, and we want to be leaders in all three of those things from a people-centric framing. Some of them it’s just maybe about the data. We want to understand what our opportunities are and show, both internally and externally, why those are opportunities for us that we uniquely will be able to deliver and create impact from and become excellent in.

So, the people is everything, but it’s not just about motivating individuals. It’s driving them to specific things – leadership, values, outcomes, impacts. How do we take all of that and make it real while also allowing individuals to know that we value them, that we think that they’re really important, that we only want to have in place in the university things that they value and think are important and that motivate them and build their creativity, their capability, and collectively, be more productive in what it is that they do? 

Download the UTS Research Strategy (pdf, 503kb)

It takes our focus on the excellence of our academic inputs and outputs, and connects them with the tools of knowledge exchange and research translation.

Our people-centred approach is framed from three different perspectives—external, data and analysis, and internal.

Our goals

uts-research-strategy D a t a a n a l y s a n d s h t s i s n i g i I n t e r n a l E x t e r n a l A c hi e v e r e silience and sustainability Dr i v e e x cel l ence v ia d e v e l opment opportuniti e s and support ser v ic e s Enhanc e , d e fine and ben c hmark e x cel l ence and qu a lity Utilise know l ed g e e x c han g e and r e s e a r c h t r ansl a tion E v o lv e and ma k e v isib l e our r e s e a r c h i dentity P osition our peop l e to captu r e and c r e a te new opportuniti e s P osition to bui l d l e a de r ship P osition our outcom e s to g ene r a te imp a ct P osition to bui l d sc a l e Del i v er v a lue

 

Our focus areas

External

Our focus will be on the following three areas:

  1. The national and international academy
  2. Our partnerships, networks and collaborations with industry, government, not-for-profit organisations and key stakeholder communities
  3. The creation of national and global social benefit

Data analysis and insights

The analysis undertaken and the insights gained will be used to:

  1. Support the scholarly endeavour
  2. Make our researchers and graduate research students and our capabilities, both internally and externally more visible through our use of better profiling
  3. Create and strengthen our connectedness—networks, teams and collaborations (trans/multidisciplinary)
  4. Provision deeper, evidence-based understanding and better decision-making

Internal

Our focus on the following will allow us to support our individuals and the university to enhance our culture of excellence:

  1. Professional and career development (motivation, aspiration and inspiration)
  2. Research environment—support services, systems and processes, infrastructure (physical and digital), and institutional, sector and research data
  3. Connectedness—networks, teams, collaborations
  4. Distinctiveness (reputation and leadership)—focus areas, critical mass and credibility, research characteristics

Next: High performing research culture
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Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation, the Bidiagal people and the Gamaygal people, upon whose ancestral lands our university stands. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.