About the ERICA Project

The Engaged and Inclusive Research Culture Alliance (ERICA) aims to transform how research is shaped by placing communities at the heart of the process. People with lived and living experience bring valuable knowledge and insight to research. By involving people who have direct experience of the issues being explored, research can better reflect what really matters to communities, leading to findings and impacts that make a meaningful difference to people’s lives.

Through its Community Led Research Scheme, HRCI-registered charities and the communities they work with, work alongside UCC researchers to co-design and deliver research projects that address real-world challenges and create meaningful impact. The scheme provides dedicated support to enable researchers and charities to collaborate and co-design community-led research together.

ERICA champions a more inclusive approach to research by making sure that the voices and experiences of communities help shape what research is done, how it is carried out, and what it achieves. By bringing UCC researchers and communities together, ERICA creates opportunities to explore important community issues that can sometimes be difficult to support through traditional research funding.  This means that smaller, community-focused ideas have an opportunity to be developed, with communities involved as partners throughout the research rather than simply being asked for their views at the end.

The partnership also provides valuable learning for researchers. Working directly with charities and people with lived and living experience can give researchers a better understanding of the issues communities face, what matters most to them, and how research can be designed to be more relevant and useful. At the same time, charities and communities can draw on the research knowledge and skills of UCC researchers to help explore the issues that matter to them. Both researchers and community partners will receive dedicated project funding while researchers (university and community partners) will be supported throughout the programme with high-quality training and wrap around support tailored specifically to ERICA’s community-led needs.

Through community-led research, collaboration, support and shared learning, ERICA is helping to build a research culture where communities and researchers learn from each other and work together to create research that can make a difference.

By learning directly from community led research, ERICA is helping to shape transformational pathways for change across research practice, researcher education, support and infrastructure, and research policy. In doing so, ERICA aims to build a more engaged, inclusive, and impactful research culture that delivers lasting benefits for communities, researchers, and society alike.

ERICA supports UCC’s Strategic Plan 2023-2028 - Goal One: Research and Innovation.

Programme Partners

British Science Association and Health Research Charities Ireland

ERICA is funded by the Wellcome Trust Institutional Funding for Research Culture

Governance

The ERICA Project Team provides governance oversight over the project, ensuring that it stays in line with its aims, objectives and commitments to achieving the deliverables outlined in the project plan.

Members

• Professor John O’Halloran, UCC
• Professor John F. Cryan, UCC
• Professor Maggie O’Neill, UCC
• Dr. Martin Galvin, UCC
• Dr. David O’Connell, UCC
• Dr. Siobhán Cusack, Director, UCC
• Dr. Avril Kennan, HRCI
• Ms. Sarah Chaytor, BSA

Team Members

Lead | Implementation Team (Co-applicants) | Operational Team | Collaborators

Lead

• Professor John O'Halloran, President, UCC.

Implementation Team

• Professor John F Cryan, Vice President For Research & Innovation, UCC.
• Professor Maggie O’Neill, Director of UCC Futures-Collective Social Futures, UCC.
• Dr. David O’Connell, Director, UCC.
• Dr. Siobhán Cusack, Director, UCC.
• Dr. Martin Galvin, Head of Civic & Community Engagement, UCC.
• Ms. Sarah Chaytor, Vice-President for Policy, Partnerships & Impact, British Science Association.
• Dr. Avril Kennan, CEO, Health Research Charities Ireland.

Operational Team

• Dr. Martin Galvin, Head of Civic & Community Engagement, UCC.
• Ms. Michelle O’Riordan, Education and Public Engagement Officer, UCC.
• Ms. Ashling O’Sullivan, Project Coordinator, UCC.

Collaborators

• Dr. Aoife Coffey, UCC.
• Professor Ciara Heavin, UCC.
• Professor Des Fitzgerald, UCC.
• Professor Laura Lundy, QUB.
• Dr. Orla O’Donovan, UCC.
• Dr. Yensi Flores Bueso, UCC.
• Mr. David Hogan, UCC.