This brief blog is designed as an update to this one https://theglobalacademy.ac/what-makes-a-good-researcher-page-on-the-global-academy-website/ . Whilst all of the advice remains valid, and you may want to read that guide before this one, we have noticed one particular element of many researcher pages is letting them down – the Research Focus section.
There are any number of reasons why a researcher might choose to create a profile on the Global Academy website. Here are just a few:
- To showcase their work and perhaps raise their profile in their research field
- To be part of a global researcher community
- As keen supporters of the UN Sustainable Development Goals they want to align their work to the goals framework
- Respect for the work of others who are already members of the Global Academy
- To feel part of ‘something bigger’ – research can be a lonely activity
- To attract collaboration and job opportunities
For a profile to even begin to meet these objectives a researcher page needs to have ‘impact’.
Some of this impact is provided online by the website and the format of the researcher pages, which emphasise the contribution of the research work to the Global Goals. However, Global Academy membership is also an opportunity to explain your research work clearly to build your visibility on the internet. The Research Focus section is your chance for some important self-promotion to tell the world how your work contributes to the SDGs. It’s a prominent part of your Global Academy page so do make the most of it!
What is your Research Focus and how do you tell others about it?
The Research Focus is the place on your page where you can add ‘free text’ about your research so it offers a real opportunity. We’re always disappointed when researchers who join the Global Academy miss out on this benefit! For maximum value any page on the internet, (not just the Global Academy!) to maximise its value, must do three things:
- Push your page to the top when somebody is searching for you (usually on Google)
- Be visible and prominent for other researchers and also recruiters
- Contain plenty of Keywords that help to explain your work, locate it within academic discipline/s and help visitors understand the importance of your research contribution.
All of these should be evident in the ‘Research Focus’ section of your Global Academy page. It doesn’t have to be a long section!
Here are 7 great examples!
We hope you can find inspiration here. Many thanks to the seven Global Academy researchers from whom we have ‘borrowed’ their work to showcase here. Their work spans 13 different SDGs.
1. Research Focus (Relevant to Goals 3, 6 & 13)
My research encompasses freshwater riverine, floodplain and wetland habitats in southern Africa with a particular focus on the ecology, food web structure and biodiversity of fish and aquatic invertebrates of these ecosystems. This has applications towards the management and conservation of these ecosystems as they are severely under threat by not only humans, but future predicted climate change as well.
2. Research Focus (relevant to Goals 6, 13 & 15)
I am an ecological researcher focusing on long-term landscape changes primarily during the Holocene. My expertise is in the use of multiple tools\proxies such as: pollen, charcoal, sediment physico-chemical characteristics and land-cover reconstruction (REVEALS)\spatial interpolation to develop records of land-cover change and understand various aspects such as vegetation change, fire history and sediment processes.
Through a multidisciplinary approach, I collaborate with archaeologists, historians and climate modellers to develop an understanding of human-environmental interactions over the last 12,000 years in different landscapes. We have developed land-cover reconstructions for Europe for the last 11700 cal BP to provide reliable estimates of land-cover change that can be used for climate modelling.
3. Research Focus (Relevant to Goals 9, 12 & 13)
Here my past and current research focus:
– What is peculiar in the development of environmental innovations (as respect to other innovations), especially as far as the resources and capabilities needed to develop them;
– Tensions and trade-off in environmental sustainability: understanding how organizations can go beyond the business case perspective toward sustainability, and overcoming the means-end divide needed to effectively reduce impacts on the environment;
– how firms can support the greening of their value chains, considering production activities are currently highly fragmented & internationally dispersed;
– how new 4.0 technologies can support reduce environmental footprint of firms
– factors supporting firms and individuals to adopt adaptation (vs mal-adaptation) strategies
4. Research Focus (Relevant to Goals 11, 12 & 14)
My research focus is on environmentally responsible behaviour and pro-environmental behaviour change. I am interested in the affective and behavioural responses to environmental degradation, especially in the context of the coastal and marine environment and their use for recreation, tourism and leisure. I am interested in environmental sustainability operations within the tourism and hospitality sector. My past research has focused on ethics and entrepreneurship in sustainable tourism. I believe that we can learn a lot from best practice examples. I am a researcher with a practitioner background, having led for many years a global sustainable tourism initiative – WTTC’s Tourism for Tomorrow Awards – before joining academia.
Key words: environmentally responsible behaviour, activism, beach tourism, sustainability in tourism and hospitality
5. Research Focus (Relevant to Goals 2 & 3)
My research activities are focused on solving problems around antimicrobial resistance profiling of pathogens and development of biopharmaceuticals against infectious diseases. We are exploring bioactive principles of plant origins; probiotic investigation; and bioactive peptides produced by lactic acid bacteria and endophytes. I’m as well involved in the Data and Software Carpentry in African community.
6. Research Focus (Relevant to Goals 4 & 10)
My research program critically investigates issues on inequity in education involving cultural capital theory and socioeconomic reproduction. It examines the influence of familial and school factors on student learning, and how familial socioeconomic backgrounds moderate school effects on student learning. Familial factors I have examined comprise socioeconomic status, cultural capital, and parental involvement while school-level factors comprise education policies and school leadership and processes. In my research, I have employed both conceptual and empirical analyses. In particular, I have often adopted an international perspective and used multilevel modelling to analyze international large-scale datasets such as those from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in my empirical analyses.
7. Research Focus (Relevant to Goals 5, 7 & 13)
Many countries are attempting to adopt sustainable development measures in order to impede increasing challenges posed by climate change and global warming. To achieve the goal of a green and sustainable economy, economies must formulate policies that will not induce existing social inequalities, for example, gender inequality. My research focus is on gender inequality and environmental issues, climate change, and energy efficiency in particular. Gendered aspects of environmental issues are crucial in the sense that these portray important questions of uniformity, equity, effectiveness, and efficacy as well as indicate the significance of women’s distinctive role in climate change adaptation measures and greener lifestyles at local, national, and global level.
