Animal Welfare Research Network: Enhancing research culture, quality, relevance and impact

The Animal Welfare Research Network was established (with funding from BBSRC) in 2016. Since then it has grown to a thriving and productive network with a membership of over 1200 individuals from 276 organisations, including animal welfare researchers and a wide range of stakeholders. Currently the AWRN is funded through BBSRC Responsive Mode with a Government Partnership Award. In addition, the AWRN recently secured BBSRC funding for a one-year project to develop our activities in relation to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). The current application is for core funding to sustain the AWRN for a further three-year period. During the funded period, the AWRN will focus on eight objectives (co-designed with members) to meet the overall aim of improving research quality, capacity, culture, societal relevance and impact. To ensure stakeholder relevance and a focus on EDI, project delivery will be guided by the network Coordinating Group, the Stakeholder Advisory Board, the EC committee and the EDI Working Group (composed of members with diverse lived experience). In order to enhance research culture in animal welfare science, we will continue to focus on improving EDI and supporting ECR development. Planned EDI initiatives include working with The Equal Group (specialist EDI consultancy) to provide targeted EDI training to committees, tailored support to minoritised groups and share best practice; working with In2ScienceUK (specialists in bringing disadvantaged young people into STEM) to promote animal welfare science careers and create animal welfare placements; and running an EDI survey within the network. Support for the development of ECRs in the network will include an ECR day at the Annual Meeting, the continuation of the online Monthly Meet-Ups, training-focused workshops and ECR plenary, an expanded mentoring scheme and a new ECR Impact Prize. A number of initiatives will improve research quality and relevance. In order to support reduction and refinement in animal research, NC3Rs will fund Kick-start projects and feed into grant writing workshop and we will further develop the AWRN Open Science Framework. We also aim to address research gaps and consider future welfare issues through a horizon scanning focused Annual meeting and new Priming Grants for research or sandpits in novel areas. To increase collaborations, we have initiated partnerships with a number of other BBSRC-funded networks including joint workshops. We also plan to increase collaborations, lab exchanges and mentoring with organisations from our Stakeholder Advisory Board and external stakeholders. To enable an increased number of high quality funding applications in animal welfare science, we propose to fund larger Kick-start grants to fund pilot studies (with funding leveraged from NC3Rs and industry). The AWRN is committed to increase the dissemination and impact of animal welfare science. A survey of members’ outreach activities and barriers to engagement has informed our plans to provide training in science communication and outreach, while working with the NCCPE to develop a public engagement strategy and re-designing the AWRN website to disseminate material effectively. In order to increase the impact of welfare science, we aim to develop Working Groups on key welfare issues, to translate research findings into policy advice and to focus on Human Behaviour Change as an important barrier to consider during research. The planned programme will help to develop an innovative, collaborative research community that will benefit not only animal welfare researchers and practitioners, but also stakeholders and policymakers.