GW4 Building Communities Manager

The role

The GW4 Alliance (GW4) is a consortium of four of the most research-intensive and innovative universities in the UK: Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter. Collaboration sits at the very heart of the GW4 Alliance, and working with other organisations, industry, and society, GW4 aims to enhance research collaboration; address global, societal, and industrial challenges; and inform policy at national and international levels. The GW4 Directorate is funded by all four partner universities, and together we identify areas of complementary expertise to develop research communities at scale which address major global and industrial challenges. This role will be pivotal to the success of the GW4 programme and associated governance that enables the strategic potential of our alliance. 

What will you be doing?

The GW4 Building Communities Manager will play a pivotal role in the success of the Alliance through devising and implementing strategy and support requirements across GW4’s Building Communities programme, coordinating and supporting operational and strategic planning, monitoring outputs and outcomes, and providing project management support to colleagues as required. They will work closely with the GW4 Director and senior research management across the institutions to coordinate and inform strategy and planning activity, ensuring high quality and fit for purpose schemes, gathering feedback and working with colleagues to continue to improve the programme. 

You should apply if

The Building Communities (BC) Manager will be responsible for ensuring the GW4 Generator communities are supported, and their plans progress as expected. Generator communities sit across all four universities, representing the full range of academic disciplines so you will be need to be flexible and adaptable to working with different expertise. The BC Manager will work closely with Generator teams, and also with locally based GW4 Programme Managers.

The Building Communities Programme also provides support through development awards which are smaller, more flexible pots of funding, available throughout the year. The BC Manager will work with potential applicants to ensure applications meet the scope of the funding, so the funding continues to deliver scalable and innovative activities that will add value to our universities.

The successful candidate will have experience of managing funding for research activities, and be confident working with academics at all career stages. You will have an understanding of the importance of achieving excellence in research practice, how the university research ecosystem as a whole sits together, and therefore how important the funding and activities that you will be managing are to the four universities.

This role is 0.6FTE and could be taken on as a development secondment opportunity. The role is expected to be fixed term until December 2024 to cover a career break.

Additional information

For informal queries about the role, please contact Jennifer Evans on j.evans@gw4.ac.uk. 

This advert will close at 23:59 GMT on Monday 6th May.

Our strategy and mission

We recently launched our strategy to 2030 tying together our mission, vision and values. 

The University of Bristol aims to be a place where everyone feels able to be themselves and do their best in an inclusive working environment where all colleagues can thrive and reach their full potential. We want to attract, develop, and retain individuals with different experiences, backgrounds and perspectives – particularly people of colour, LGBT+ and disabled people - because diversity of people and ideas remains integral to our excellence as a global institution.

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