2013 Press Releases
New voice for researchers
UCC researcher Dr Gordon Dalton is the chair of a new international consortium of research staff associations that aims to provide a collective voice for groups representing researchers at home and abroad.
The consortium will place particular emphasis on influencing policy to improve the career prospects of researchers.
The International Consortium of Research Staff associations (ICoRSA) was formally launched in Birmingham last month by Dr Iain Cameron from the Research Council UK. ICoRSA is an international umbrella group set up to support national associations and international bodies representing researchers. ICoRSA will be a non-profit organisation registered and headquartered in Ireland.
The association seeks to enhance research outcomes through the development of researcher communities worldwide, inform international research policy, and build a shared repository of effective and fair researcher working practices.
ICoRSA has been invited to many high profile events in the first year of its inauguration including the Irish Presidency Forum on research careers and the UNESCO World Science Forum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, held in November 2013. After the World Science Forum event, UNESCO, through the office of Lidia Brito, director of science policy and capacity building, declared it will start the process of recognising ICORSA as an official NGO it will work with. One of the main projects on the table is to expand the network of ICoRSA research staff associations in African countries. The second project will be to tackle gender issues globally for researchers.
Members of the steering group include Chris Thomson of the UK Research Staff Association, David Finger of the National Postdoc Association of the USA, Carlos Acevedo-Rocha from the World Association of Young Scientists, as well as UCC’s Dr Dalton.
Dr Dalton is a senior research fellow in the Beaufort Research, UCC, and was recently awarded the Early Careers Research Leader award by UCC for his work promoting research staff associations in UCC and internationally.