During the Recognition & Rewards Festival there will be two rounds of workshops. In the table below you will find an overview of the workshops. In the register form you can select the workshops you would like to join. You are welcome to join any workshop, however to ensure that the choice of workshops fits you well, we classified it into several levels:

  • General
    No specific prior knowledge is required to participate in these sessions. However, it is helpful to attend the pre-program information session and read the position paper Room for Everyone’s Talent.
  • Intermediate
    These sessions require some prior knowledge and are aimed at those directly or indirectly involved in Recognition & Rewards initiatives: members of the committees at the institutions, policy makers, members of the Executive Boards and other administrators, international counterparts, and academics in general.

Various groups and suitable workshops

For this edition of the Recognition & Rewards Festival, we specifically invite various groups. Therefore, we have listed which workshops are specifically target for a specific group. Please find the short overview below. However, this list is not exhaustive. Feel free to make your own choice, regardless of your background you are welcome at any workshop. 

Early career academics

  •  1.9 Recognizing diverse PhD trajectories: Rethinking doctoral assessment

Committee members involved in promotion and appointments

  •  2.6 Evaluating the impact of introducing narrative CV formats for research teams – unleash your meta-research ideas

Academics in leadership positions

  • 1.3 Acknowledge talent for the future
  • 1.5 How to unlock your team potential: a collaborative workshop
  • 2.1 Building an academic environment to facilitate transdisciplinary team science
  • 2.8 Unlocking the Potential: Recognizing and Leading Diverse Talent in Teams
Workshops
11.45 - 13.00h | Workshop round 1
1.1 Identity and Expectations in the early career researcher experience (G)
Mollie Etheridge, Katherine Dawson, Marie Collier
The dynamic between early career researchers/academics (ECR/ECA) and their principal investigators (PIs)/managers is formative in shaping academic careers. At the University of Cambridge, the Action Research on Research Culture team are exploring how ECRs and research supervisors feel about their respective roles and professional relationships. We are using testimonial-based methods to capture how these relationships develop and what people value the most. In this session, we will share our study design, findings so far, and how we hope to use these insights to improve the experience of ECRs at Cambridge. We invite participants to take part in one of our methods, we will engage in dialogue about what other institutions are doing in this space, and discuss the potential for colleagues to adapt this work for their own needs. See this link for further details on our study.
1.2 PubQuiz: How Evidence-Based is your vision on team science? (G)
Quiz masters Caspar van Lissa, Inge van de Ven & Marjan van Hunnik
In the last couple of decades (and still), science is more and more moving from single-scientist work towards a cooperation of multiple scientists from different universities and/or different fields of expertise working together on a complex issue, together with support staff and external partners. Science in 'teams' - whether it is a hierarchical team in your own university, or a temporary diffuse team beside the boundary of all kinds of institutions - has pros and contras we have to deal with.
From scientific literature on Team Science together with some good practices, we have extracted a lot of recommendations on how to stimulate and support the Team Science of today. We challenge the participants to guess the right answers to some of the recommendations.
Spontaneous team cooperation of the participants is allowed and even rewarded with extra points.
1.3 Acknowledge talent for the future (I)
Chiat Cheong, Maud Vissers
Erasmus MC initiated Care-4-Research-Talent (C4RT), a 2-year pilot. The C4RT project team provides structure and programmes to prompt departments to recognize and support broad talent development of individual researchers, while acquiring a solid basis for the departmental strategic talent management.
This workshop discusses the implementation of the Career Development Review, a structured approach within the C4RT programme to overview talent in the broadest sense, to increase transparency on career perspectives and to offer suitable support on career advancement to all.
1.4 Teamwork: it's not just a game (G)
Robbert Hoogstraat & Kasper Gossink-Melenhorst
The workshop will revolve around playing a custom game to simulate teamwork within universities. In doing so the game will help facilitate the discussion around how we can best reward and recognize different talents and how supporting staff and academic staff can work together more efficiently.
1.5 How to unlock your team potential: a collaborative workshop (I)
Eveline Braber, Anna Smulders & Maud van Roessel
To help and challenge teams, team leads and open-up the conversation about talents, competencies, ambitions and complementarity we developed the team based working workshop format. This workshop format aims to trigger teams to not only think about skills and strengths of team members, but also about talents, competencies, and ambitions and how these can be best assigned to the tasks that a team is up to. It challenges the team leads/teams to deal with sudden changes in the team composition. It helps them think about the characteristics of a team lead and the involvement of other team members, like support staff. Question like ‘How can we enable the talents of the team members’, ‘How can we foster development while being able to accomplish all our tasks’, and ‘How can we create a more inclusive and diverse team’ will come up during the workshop. After exploring the team members (fictive persona’s) and assigning them to the tasks you, as a fictive team lead, will be challenged by sudden changes that require you to make changes to your team composition. Will you be able to create room for everyone’s talents while also accomplishing your tasks..?
1.6 Challenges in the recognition and rewards of Open Science: time to move forward (G)
Michiel de Boer, Prezemek Pawelczak & Ana Ranitovic
Experiences from our work in the Dutch Reproducibility Network (NLRN) show that there seems to be a mismatch between the needs of researchers and available support for working according to Open Science principles. In this workshop we hypothesize that we can stimulate Open Science practises by explicitly recognizing and rewarding both academic and non-academic staff in working together on this. We will explore ways forward by discussing several statements in subgroups and by presenting examples of best practices.
1.7 Diversifying teams and talents: Recognising the value added by research professionals (G)
Annemarie Vastenhouw-van der Linden, Andreja Zulim de Swarte, Martijn Gerretsen & Giovanna Lima
What kind of professionals work together with researchers to enhance excellent and impactful research and innovation?! And what do they need? What is the role of support staff in the composition of a team? How are their different talents appreciated? What can we improve to develop and retain talents increasingly needed in academia?
Research professionals, research support staff - the international term is Research Managers and Administrators - work in the interface of Science and Innovation. Their profession is not defined yet, but emerges in response to real and intrinsic needs of the R&I system. Research Management takes various shapes and its scope is multidimensional, with various sub-job types. There is an international momentum to strengthen the capacity for research management by upskilling, recognition, networking and capacity building. This will improve the whole R&I system.
Join us for a conversation about the added value these professionals bring to the research we do in our organisations, and how the Recognition & Rewards programme can benefit and influence current developments in these increasingly professionalised careers. During this session participants, including early career academics, directors, HR managers, will contribute to (inter)national developments for the recognition and advancement of the research management profession.
1.8 How to build a talented team (G)
Sasja van Warmerdam, Eveline Allon, & Renée Oprel
What is your everyday behavior that benefits you and others? And how does it help to build effective teams? Let's start today with a dialogue about your talents and how these talent contribute to make a valued difference in stimulating teamwork.
1.9 Recognizing diverse PhD trajectories: Rethinking doctoral assessment (G)
Ana Barbosa Mendes & Benthe van Wanrooij
Over the past years, the PhD trajectory has become more diverse. PhD candidates are able to not only train their research skills but also develop competences in for example communication, leadership, education, open science, and impact. Throughout their training, PhD candidates perform a diverse range of tasks related to these competences that do not always result in concrete output for their thesis. However, doctoral assessment is still mostly based on the doctoral thesis, where the PhD trajectory is deemed successful if PhD candidates are able to produce novel independent research in the form of the thesis. Thus, all other tasks performed and competences developed by the PhD candidate remain invisible in the assessment and may not be recognized and rewarded unless they indirectly result in a dissertation chapter. Therefore, in this session we will explore whether relying solely on the PhD thesis for assessment is still appropriate given the changing nature of a PhD degree. Moreover, we want to imagine with the participants of the workshop what doctoral assessment could look like if we consider how PhDs could be recognized and rewarded for their activities that go beyond doing research.
1.10 Gift economies and formal reward systems in universities(G)
Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner & Tjistke Holtrop
In this interactive session, we hope to stimulate reflection on how university staff members deal with conflicts between individual and communal priorities in research and education (broadly construed, incl. publishing, reviewing, maintaining infrastructure). We will kick off the session with a 10 min joint pitch by the organizers that illustrate the above problems in conceptual and practical terms, on the basis of research on such conflicts in scholarly publishing. We will then ask participants to reflect on and discuss several everyday examples of gift giving and exchange in their research and education-related practice where they encounter similar considerations around individual priorities and communal responsibilities. The rest of the session is an open discussion around central questions that follow from this reflection: How and where do these conflicts manifest? Are these considerations gendered or particular to certain disciplines or kinds of staff members? What knowledge about science and higher education and its systems of recognition and reward have participants developed when learning to navigate the conflicts? We will end the session with a discussion on how these logics of gift and exchange in academia should be brought to bear on our systems of recognition and reward.
14.00 - 15.15h | Workshop round 2
2.1 Building an academic environment to facilitate transdisciplinary team science (G)
Hilde Verbeek, & Lotte Krabbenborg (The Young Academy)
The Young Academy has conducted a project collective knowledge development, in which it explored how transdisciplinarity in academia can be embedded. In this workshop results from the project will be used to explore with participants how the academic environment can support these transdisciplinary partnerships. What roles and competencies does that require from academics and how can teams be supported? What infrastructure is being developed to ensure knowledge sharing and knowledge integration? What obstacles and opportunities do academics and civil-society partners encounter when setting up and carrying out transdisciplinary projects? We distinguish here between obstacles and opportunities encountered in day-to-day working practice, in cooperation during the project, and in cooperation with the funding bodies. This will result in recommendations and clear guidelines for researchers, funders, and knowledge institutions – on the best way for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research to be carried out and how it can be supported using the Recognition and Reward movement.
2.2 Journey of Progress game: building a Theory of Change for diverse teams (G)
Erika Hajdu, Alise Scerbinina & Bianca Langhout
Join us to develop your theory of change on how to develop diversified and talented teams! Come experience the Journey of Progress game, a card set that enables you (and your team) to think collaboratively on how and why change is supposed to happen in your given context. In just 40 minutes, participants build pathways from their desirable future to the specific actions needed to realise change. The card set can be used in various contexts to understand envisioned change processes. Any group of individuals working towards a common goal, without prior knowledge, can use the tool. Curious to try? We hope to see you soon!
2.3 When and How Does Team Science Improve Science? (G)
Sajedeh Rasti & Daniel Lakens
This workshop aims to explore and discuss elements of coordination that contribute to improving research lines as well as how to implement coordination in practice. This workshop involves presentations and interactive discussions and targets anyone who is interested in effective team science and improving the quality of research, from early career researchers to professors and supervisors.
2.4 mmmAcademia: a card game about Recognition and Rewards in Academia (G)
Evelyn Kroesbergen, Jacqueline Drost, Maartje Cobussen, Jacqueline Heijen, & Frank Léoné
Curious about how to stimulate the conversation on Recognition and Rewards at your university? Join our workshop and play the Recognition and Rewards card game, mmmAcademia. Based on your game experience, you’ll reflect and share ideas to introduce and use the game at your university.
2.5 Diversity in hiring: a case study (G)
Gunther Cornelissen
Which hiring practices lead to a diverse outcome, and which don't? Forget the theory, learn to experiment with what works in your setup, and what doesn't.
2.6 Evaluating the impact of introducing narrative CV formats for research teams - unleash your meta-research ideas (I)
Sean Sapcariu, James Morris, & Karen Stroobants
Unleash your meta-research ideas: what questions would you like to see answered to determine whether the introduction of narrative CVs for research teams are resulting in success (or failure)?

Narrative CV formats have been introduced as a new assessment tool by an increasing number of funders and institutions. There are a range of reasons, and associated team science principles, why these formats are being implemented. Several funders and institutions have started to evaluate whether these principles are being enhanced through introducing the narrative format and it is becoming clear that evaluating such outcomes is complex.

In this workshop, we invite (future) users of the narrative CV - applicants as well as reviewers - to unleash their meta-research ideas, and reflect with us on the complexity of assessing the success (or failure) of the introduction of narrative CV formats for research teams.
2.7 Embedding and sustaining research data and research software professionals within research teams and institutions (I)
Yan Wang, Celia van Gelder, Julie Beardsell, Marta Teperek, Maria Cruz, Sarah Coombs, Lieke de Boer, & Jeremy Cohen
Research data and software management has become an indispensable activity in interdisciplinary and collaborative research. Emerging skills and expertise in data and software management require research teams to include diverse types of data and software professionals. The integration of such roles in research teams and institutions is still at an early stage. This workshop brings speakers from several key stakeholder organizations in the Netherlands and the UK (digital competence centres, funders, research performing organisations and professional network organisations) to outline the current challenges with regards to sustaining data and software professionals in research teams and institutions. Participants are invited to share best practices and actively discuss together actionable suggestions on how to tackle the challenges.
2.8 Unlocking the Potential: Recognizing and Leading Diverse Talent in Teams (G)
Amrita Das & Maiza Campos Ponce
In the dynamic landscape of academia, fostering diverse talents is not just a goal—it's a necessity. Join us for an hour of insight as we delve into the heart of inclusive leadership.
Discover the power of empathy, equity, and active listening in recognizing and rewarding diverse talents within academic teams. Through interactive activities and engaging discussions, gain practical strategies to cultivate an environment where every individual’s unique skills are celebrated.
This workshop employs the Mixed Classroom Educational Model lens, offering a glimpse into the world of inclusive leadership tailored for academic environments. Step into a space where inclusivity isn’t just a buzzword—it's the foundation for success.
Join us and embark on a journey of discovery, empowerment, and inclusivity. Together, let's champion diverse talents and create brighter futures for all in academia.
2.9 The dreams and fears of the PhD in your team (G)
Anneloes Kip, Ana Hriscu, & Ross Hamilton
Join us for an engaging and interactive workshop designed to foster meaningful conversations between PhD candidates and participants. In this session, participants will have the unique opportunity to interview PhD candidates, delving into their dreams, fears, and needs. Together, we will explore the aspirations, anxieties, and requirements of the academic of 2035 and discuss what support universities should provide as employers.

Participants will collaborate in groups to create posters that capture the collective insights gathered during the interviews. These posters will be presented to all attendees at the end of the workshop, highlighting common themes and innovative ideas.

The primary goal of this workshop is to shed light on the position of PhD candidates and the uncertainty they face regarding their future academic career paths. By participating, you will contribute to a crucial dialogue on how universities can better support their emerging scholars, ensuring a brighter and more secure future for academia.
2.10 Virtual Harmony: Building Cross-Cultural Bridges in Remote teams (I)
Rawan Ghazzawi
Cultural differences can create additional barriers to successful communication, influencing how people interpret information and make decisions. This workshop will delve into the various dimensions of cultures, offering valuable insights into how cultural values shape our perceptions and interactions. Participants will gain a deeper understanding of their own cultural backgrounds and engage in interactive exercises designed to open up conversations on cultural differences. Join us to enhance your intercultural communication skills and contribute to the development of diversified and talented teams.