Sara Shinton’s career developing research leaders

‘Working in research means you’re working with huge levels of uncertainty,’ says Sara Shinton, the director of UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI’s) Future Leaders Fellows Development Network, which delivers leadership training and mentorship to over 650 fellows across the UK. The fellowships are designed to help talented researchers pursue world-class interdisciplinary research and innovation. The network run by Shinton prepares them to deal with the ups and downs of a high-risk research career.

Originally from the UK’s West Midlands, Shinton began her academic journey as an undergraduate studying chemical and analytical science at Swansea University. ‘I did analytical chemistry in the years before chemistry departments knew about marketing, so obviously that would now be called forensic chemistry!’ says Shinton.

Forensic science had been her original career plan, but she discovered that she didn’t enjoy its systematic way of working. She continued at Swansea for a PhD on liquid crystals and a postdoc on polymer blends, but ultimately wanted a more people-centred career. She applied for a Royal Society of Chemistry funded role at Heriot–Watt University in Edinburgh, UK, to improve the communication skills of undergraduate chemists. ‘[That] took me towards what has ultimately become [a career in] research leadership and [research] culture development,’ she says.

From there, Shinton became a careers advisor at Newcastle University and eventually set up her own business in researcher development training and consultancy, which she ran for 17 years. She says she wasn’t afraid of going out on her own: ‘Postdoc-ing is a great preparation for a life of precarity, because you’re always on contracts, you’re always chasing the next bit of money.’

One sideline was writing a ‘career doctor’ column for Science magazine, where she began to see patterns in the problems researchers were facing. As well as the stress of short-term contracts, she increasingly spoke to people who were not treated well by their senior colleagues and their institutions didn’t seem prepared to intervene.

‘[I] increasingly started to hit this wall of doing the same sorts of workshops trying to support postdocs, when really the institutions themselves needed to treat them differently,’ she says.

In 2017 she became head of researcher development at the University of Edinburgh and hoped to try and address some of these issues head on, overseeing the implementation of the new Researcher Development Concordat – an agreement between institutes and funders across the UK to support career development.

A network of support 

In 2020 UKRI launched the Future Leaders Fellows Development Network and Shinton took on the role of the network’s director, leading a team of 20 staff and consultants from different institutions across the UK.

The network supports a growing cohort of fellows from academia, industry or other non-profit organisations, who typically receive £1.5m to pursue a big research idea over their seven-year fellowship and further develop their leadership potential. ‘I think funders are joining the dots and saying that if we want to have a positive research culture, we need to play a part in this, and that starts when we decide who to fund,’ explains Shinton.

The type of support the network provides varies but includes coaching and opportunities for 360-degree feedback. ‘Everybody needs different things,’ says Shinton, but common topics include recruiting and growing a team and understanding how to induct and motivate team members.

The network has also provided support for a fellow to set up a new research centre and recently ran a project on artificial intelligence and its application across research fields. The 10th call is open until 18 June, recruiting another 75 fellows to start in 2026.

Shinton is also the institutional lead for a Wellcome Trust funded project in collaboration with the universities of Glasgow and St Andrews to build and understand collegiate leadership across all institutions. She thinks performance management is still one of the major issues that universities need to tackle.

Problems with promotion

‘If people behave badly in universities, we seem to find it really difficult to deal with that and we continue to promote them and advance them, even when there’s a knowledge that they aren’t great at supporting and developing others,’ she explains. On top of this, the precarious, short-term nature of early research careers makes these types of problems very difficult for individuals to confront.

Now Shinton’s ambition is to see universities recognise that it’s not just academics who are leaders. ‘It’s very difficult, if you’re not an academic, to progress in a university, so perhaps this is the last challenge of my career,’ she says.

She is determined to see universities do more to recognise staff in professional services and research-enabling roles where there is so much innovation going on. ‘We’ve seen progress in a lot of aspects of equality, diversity and inclusion, but it feels like that is the one where we still have some way to go.’