Staff Profile

Introduction

As Research Funding Development Managers (RFDMs) our main role is to support academic staff to improve research grants and contracts income and, in particular, that from Research Councils.

We try to provide:

research funding intelligence;
targeted support for strategic research activities;
key institutional links for research funders;
facilitation for collaboration across the University and with other institutions;
organise visits from funding bodies;
arrange appropriate workshops for grant applications.

Just contact us if you think we can help in any way.

I act as a central point of contact for BBSRC, MRC, Wellcome Trust, NIHR and the Department of Health.

Background

I read Mathematics and History of Science at Leeds University many moons ago. My first post was as a JRA at Newcastle University working on Eighteenth Century British Books, a historical bibliography project funded by the publisher William Dawson of Folkestone. I was subsequently based at the Bodleian Library and Cambridge University Library in continuation of this project. I then became a Leverhulme Research Fellow at the University of Kent at Canterbury working on the Bibliography of Eighteenth Century Legal Literature but spent most of this time in the round reading room of the British Museum Library and the Inns of Court libraries. Then followed three years at Teesside Polytechnic (now the University of Teesside) researching my PhD in “English scientific societies of the 18th and early 19th centuries”. Thereafter with research colleagues I set up a niche academic publishing company in Newcastle that created and published reference works and large data, source material projects on CD-ROM. I was Editor of the Company’s Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue (NSTC) Project published in 62 volumes and 14 CD-ROMs and similarly responsible for the company’s Biography Database: 1680-1820 (BDB) published in 3 CD-ROMs and A Bibliography of Nineteenth-Century Legal Literature (BINELL), 3 volumes and one CD-ROM. Twenty years later the niche no longer existed and the company sold off its databases. Returning to the University of Newcastle I spent nearly 5 years as Research Development Officer for the Institute for Cell and Molecular Biosciences (ICaMB) assisting with grant applications, liaising with funding bodies and circulating information concerning upcoming grant and initiative calls. From 2007 I have been Research Funding Development Manager for the Medical Faculty. Please get in touch for help with grant applications; obtaining institutional statements of support and for training sessions involving grant funding.

Qualifications

BSc(Hons) Leeds University Mathematics & History of Science
MPhil University of Kent at Canterbury
PhD (CNAA) "English scientific societies of the C18th and early C19th"