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The ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú's Research and Innovation leadership community came together in late December 2025 for a Research Culture Festive Collaboration event. The session outlined the for the 2029 Research Excellence Framework (REF), following a recent three-month pause, and explained how the new Research Culture Pillar groups will support preparation for the exercise.

More than 40 Unit of Assessment (UoA) coordinators, Associate Heads Research and Innovation, Associate Deans Research and Innovation, Research Culture staff, and others supporting REF came together to watch the live national update on changes to the REF. Following this, they met to hear more about the eight new Research Culture Pillars and to discuss how these will support our research community as well as contribute to our REF 2029 preparations. As the meeting took place the day before the Christmas break, the flow of ideas was given an extra boost by a few festive mince pies, kindly provided through the University’s Enhancing Research Culture Fund.

In his online presentation, Dr Steven Hill, Chair of the national REF Steering Group, delivered an hour-long overview of the major changes to the format and expectations of REF 2029 announced the previous week.

Steven first spoke of the delays the national REF team had experienced in the last 18 months in defining the evidence and measures for assessing the ‘People Culture and Environment - PCE’ element of the REF. Based on the findings of the PCE pilot exercise (announced at the same time), the most striking change to the REF process will be that the research environment section of the REF 2029 - formally PCE - would now be titled ‘Strategy, People and Research Environment - SPRE’, and that the overall weighting (the basis of the overall REF score and funding) for this element would change from 25% to 20%. To balance this, the REF Outputs element (known as ‘Contributions to Knowledge, and Understanding - CKU), will rise from 50% to 55% of the total REF weighting.

The emphasis on strategy in the new SPRE element is to be reflected in how the evidence provided by universities will be structured. Going forward, each REF based discipline area or ‘Unit of assessment - UoA’ will be required to write a unit level statement (ULS) which ‘focuses on how the institution’s research mission and strategy are implemented within the unit, including evidence of the effects.’ The ULS will be read alongside a single Institutional level statement (ILS), which will describe the institutional strategies, policies and support for research. The ILS will contribute 60% of the marks for a UoA SPRE element, and the ULS will contribute 40% of the marks. The REF guidance sets out that there should be no duplication in the information between the ILS and the ULS documents.

Although a broad overview was provided in the update about the expectations of SPRE, many of the details, especially about what data and evidence can be used to illustrate the statements, are still to be determined. The final guidance on the assessment and submission criteria is not expected until Autumn 2026.

As part of the update we were given some further information on what will need to be included in the new SPRE ILS and ULS statements. Both statements will have the same overarching structure, with information organised under four headings.

Many of the leads of the eight Research Culture Pillars that are designed to provide support and coordination of university wide research culture and SPRE-associated initiatives also presented at the meeting. The leads outlined their areas and let colleagues know how they could get involved or find out more.

The subsequent discussions and networking appeared to be very helpful, and it is clear that it will be more important than ever to coordinate the new SPRE related requirements across the University. Initial work has been undertaken to draft the ILS working document and a further event has been scheduled in late January 2026 to discuss and plan the next steps.

The slides presented at the festive event include summaries of the Research Culture Pillars.