The Business and Management Research Institute (BMRI) held a series of brief talks to increase awareness of BMRI initiatives and policies to staff and encourage them to be more research active. About 30 participants (academic staff and PGR students) attended the event.

Prof Ram Ramanathan, Director, BMRI started the event by providing an overview of BMRI, its objectives, an extract of Faculty’s Business Plan, achievements in the previous year, and plans for the current year. He provided a list of successful proposals for BMRI Internal Project funding 2017-18. He highlighted the requirement in the Faculty Business Plan to have at least four public engagement activities per year per research centre evidencing student recruitment, funding and/or research impact.

The overview of BMRI was followed by brief presentations by leaders of BMRI’s five research centres.

Dr Crina Baltag, Acting leader for the Centre for Research in Law (CRiL) was the first to present highlights of the achievements and activities of the research centre. It was highlighted that CRiL was actively represented in external and internal conferences, seminars and workshops and had a constant number of excellent quality publications in international journals and books.

This was followed by presentations by Dr Sandar Win on the activities of the Centre for Research in Contemporary Accounting, Finance and Economics (ResCAFE), by Dr Alia El Banna on the activities of the Centre for International Business and Marketing (CIBAM), by Dr Christina Schwabenland on the activities of the Centre for Leadership Innovation (CLI), and by Professor Yanqing Duan on the activities of the Business and Information Systems Research Centre (BISC).

Finally, Dr Mohamed Saeudy presented his ideas for a new research centre on sustainability accounting. Queries were raised on the distinction between existing ResCAFE research centre and the new proposed centre, and it was agreed that the idea of sustainability would be the main distinctive feature. Highlights of these presentations include recent funding submissions in ResCAFE, Writing retreat by CLI, funding successes in BISC, and PhD bursaries awarded to CIBAM and CRiL centre leaders.

Principal Investigators of successful projects with BMRI’s internal funding 2016/17 presented findings of their research projects in the afternoon session.

Finally, Professor Ramanathan discussed BMRI’s preparations on the ensuing Research Excellence Framework (REF2021) highlighting some of the final decisions announced by the Higher Education Funding Council for England [PDF] (HEFCE) in November 2017.

The event ended with thanks from BMRI Director.