Horizons Academy

Horizons Academy provides opportunities for research colleagues to develop interdisciplinary skills and make connections with colleagues from different disciplines, institutions and backgrounds.

Through our well-established programmes and interventions, we provide bespoke training, support and curated environments to help researchers build their portfolio of skills, expand their networks, and spark new ideas.

Horizons Academy may help you:

develop, or further develop, skills for interdisciplinary research
connect with researchers from other disciplines
explore different methods to address complex challenges
build networks across sectors
develop your interdisciplinary learning and teaching materials

Take a look at the following programmes for more information, including how to apply.

Crucible

Our Crucible programme is designed to bring researchers together in a supportive and intellectually stimulating interdisciplinary space. Here, they are supported in developing their interdisciplinary skills and making new connections.

Delivered by our experienced facilitators, our bespoke interventions are used to tease out commonalities and spark new collaborative ideas between researchers.

Within our Crucible programme, we have a Global Crucible which runs annually for colleagues at University of Leeds, University of Witwatersrand and partner institutions – you can find out more on this, including whether your institution is already a partner – in the following section.

We also regularly deliver Crucible for other institutions and cross-sectoral organisations. To date, these include Queen’s University Belfast, Circle U, White Rose University Consortium and the University of Oslo.

To find out more abut our Crucible programme, and whether we are able to deliver in your institution or organisation, please email the Horizons team at horizons@leeds.ac.uk

Global Crucible

Our Global Crucible was a platform for researchers around the world to come together to develop skills, ideas and connect.

There were four cohorts of participants, one per academic year. At the end of each programme, participants were encouraged to apply for pump-prime funding in a competitive process.

Horizons Platform

Horizons Platform was designed to promote challenge-led interdisciplinary research and foster collaboration between the University of Leeds and the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits).

Focusing on the broad areas of global inequalities, climate and sustainability, this programme has created opportunities for an exchange of ideas and the development of a number of research projects.

Find out more about Horizons Platform.

Interdisciplinary leadership development

Our interdisciplinary leadership programmes typically combine facilitated online delivery and an in-person residential, and are delivered over the course of 4-6 months.

These programmes are designed to give researchers the space and time to develop the skills, attributes, and behaviours to be effective interdisciplinary research leaders.

Through the course, we cover:

How to build peer groups with an outcome in mind.
How to develop a healthy team culture.
How to be an inclusive interdisciplinary leader.
How to support your interdisciplinary career development.
How to create a pathway to interdisciplinary impact.

If you’re a mid-career researcher at the University of Leeds or University of Bradford, you have an opportunity to apply for our interdisciplinary programme starting in September. You can find more information about this programme, including how to apply, on the programme page.

Mentorship and coaching

We recognise that developing skills and a career path in interdisciplinary research can be challenging, and often takes researchers out of their comfort zone.

This is why we also offer mentorship and coaching, depending on programme and need.

Through these interventions we provide additional one-to-one support to early- and mid-career researchers on our substantive programmes, such as Global Crucible and Horizons Platform, as well as those in our Signals portfolio.  

Our mentorship offer is specifically designed to broaden participants’ horizons, pairing mentors and mentees up with people from completely different academic backgrounds.

Our coaching offer supports participants to reflect on and embed learning from their programme into their working life, and to use these in progressing their research, career and leadership goals.

Find out more about our mentorship programme on our blog.

Other researcher development initiatives

If you’re looking for support to develop interdisciplinary research skills in your centre, institute or institution, please email the Horizons team via horizons@leeds.ac.uk for more information on how we can help.