Within the framework of One Connected EUR, collaboration is a key component of the EUR Strategy 2030. Appreciating teamwork in academia is also one of the goals of the national Recognition & Rewards (R&R) programme. Working in teams is common, but collaborations between professional services staff (PSS) and academic staff are not often put in the spotlight even though they exist. In this interview Chiara Stenico, Bora Lushaj, and Julia Wittmayer talk about successfully working together and how to better empower teamwork at EUR.
Chiara Stenico and Bora Lushaj are colleagues at Erasmus Research Services (ERS). Both work on advancing Open & Responsible Science from related perspectives: engaged research and research data management. Chiara is Engaged Research Officer and Coordinator of the regional Hub for Impactful and Engaged Research (HIER).
Bora works as a Research Data Steward, also seconded to ISS, ESL, and the Erasmus Center for Law and Digitalization (ECLD). Both also have experience collaborating in ‘mixed’ teams where PSS and academics work together. Such teams are common at EUR, but highlighting ‘mixed’ collaborations still isn’t. The crucial role and contributions of PSS and how they shape domains of expertise often remain ‘under the radar’.
Julia Wittmayer, Professor of Transdisciplinarity and Societal Transformations at ESPhil and senior researcher at DRIFT, has worked with Bora and Chiara and says there is a need for “more appreciation that we [PSS and academics] are both working from the best intentions within the system.”
“It's the collaboration that does the trick”
Most recently, Chiara and Julia collaborated on an action research project which investigated institutional ethics review procedures and their relation to reflexive research practice. This teamwork, with collaborators from different EUR Schools and beyond, resulted in a publication Reimagining Research Ethics for the Participatory and Transformative Turn, where Chiara is a co-author (1). This still happens relatively rarely in academia – a PSS publicly getting credit in a team collaboration.
“You can't do this work as a researcher alone - you miss the perspectives and expertise of people working in services”, explains Julia. “Whether we call it professional [services] staff or academic staff, it's the collaboration that does the trick, both in better understanding the problem and developing solutions.”
The project findings became the foundation of a policy brief, which the team hopes will inform EUR policy around research ethic governance. Bora was also on the team collaborating on this brief. Last year, together with PSS and academics from and outside EUR, she led the development of the first guide (2) published in the Netherlands that introduces the CARE Principle as part of a TDCC/NWO-funded project on data sharing bottlenecks (3). Julia and Bora connected when they learned they were working on interconnected themes, and joined forces.
Creating opportunities
The research opportunities and collaborations that PSS create at EUR often remain overlooked as well. Bora’s work is a testament to such contribution. Last year, on her own initiative, she brought a funding opportunity to ECLD when she saw that legal guidance to navigate research data access and sharing conditions is not harmonized or easily accessible across institutions and support from university legal officers often runs into capacity problems. The yearly funding call of NWO/TDCC-SSH provided a chance to address this gap of “legal vagueness” connected to data and AI for research, with the feasible solution of an open knowledge bank containing accessible legal guidance, and the creation of a legal expertise network.
Bora pitched this idea to TUD and SURF, the national infrastructure for research and digitalization, while ECLD researchers recruited colleagues with complementary legal expertise in Tilburg. Bora then led the writing of the project proposal while coordinating with the consortium. In May, the LEGIS project proposal was approved by NWO.
The value of working together
Working alone can be nice, but Chiara, Bora and Julia see clear value of teamwork in academia. “It's the wisdom of the collective. You create an idea that is richer and brings more insight. It has value for the impact you want to make”, says Chiara. Julia agrees: “if you want to support societal change, you need different perspectives, across academia and beyond. Through teamwork, we get inspiration and innovation going.” Teamwork also helps advancing research by mixing expertise, says Bora. For example, the collaboration initiated at ECLD “combines research and data management expertise and directs it to solve a concrete problem for researchers.”
“It's the wisdom of the collective. You create an idea that is richer and brings more insight. It has value for the impact you want to make”
Chiara Stenico
Is there a recipe for successful teamwork? Chiara mentions good coordination, trust and “a degree of openness and warmth. The initiative of The Hub really reflects this way of working”, she points out. “It makes work life more enjoyable if we start working together instead of against one another. This is the teamwork we ideally want - a shared sense of purpose and a caring community,” adds Julia.
Empowering and appreciating teamwork
The R&R programme aims to create more opportunities to acknowledge working in teams alongside valuing individual contributions. So it is a positive development that teamwork is now officially part of the EUR strategic course. However, “I don't think EUR recognises yet what [teamwork] means”, says Julia. She points out that for academics, time spent on collaborative working often is “part of research time.” This can bring negative consequences.
Julia gives an example - many of her peers at EUR Schools “refrain from collaborative EU grants” for the fear of investing time into writing proposals and building networks without a guarantee of getting the grant – while also unable to write articles during that time. She says as long as “good research is still equated with publications”, collaboration and in its extension engaged research are not seen as beneficial for career development. For PSS, Bora believes it is important that recognising and valuing “individual effort and expertise” in a collaboration results in “job growth opportunities and being able to join the conversation when the University thinks strategically.” She would also like to see collaborative work “incentivized with real time and space. The LEGIS proposal would not have been possible without support from ESL, and a secondment at ECLD.”
What else can EUR do to recognise and value teamwork better?
Bora says that “a lot more openness” is needed at the University in terms of “actively thinking who can contribute and being more inclusive of different viewpoints.” Chiara would also like to see EUR creating opportunities and space for diverse collaborations, as “bringing together people that would not necessarily work together” creates trust between different academic domains, which she sees as part of the ‘One Connected EUR’ strategic goal. “EUR could learn from pockets within its own structure where this works particularly well, like at DRIFT”, says Julia. The Hub HIER is also already hosting and encouraging “mixed teams collaborations”, says Chiara. “It has developed as a shared vision of both PSS and engaged researchers.” Chiara also believes that “teamwork needs to be properly accounted as a milestone in your career pathway” and examples of successful teamwork deserve “more visibility, traction, and endorsement. We should see that way more.”
Erasmus University Rotterdam is modernising its system for recognising and rewarding academic staff to create more room for diverse academic talents and better enable employees to contribute to the university’s mission of creating positive societal impact. That is why EUR kicked off the Recognition & Rewards programme in 2020.
Curious what R&R means for you or your School? Get in touch with the contact person for your School for R&R or reach out to the Recognition & Rewards team directly via recognitionandrewards@eur.nl.
Sources
- 1 Huang, Y.-S. (Elaine), Wittmayer, J. M., Gelens, T., Bauer, K., Mena, R., Egger, C., & Stenico, C. (2026). Reimagining research ethics for the participatory and transformative turn: Between reflexive accountability and accountable reflexivity. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 25. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069261436025
- The CARE Principles are a data governance framework created by Indigenous scholars that addresses the needs of Indigenous communities. At the same time, CARE-informed data practices can support participatory and action research and enhance the benefits of research data for communities. The guide also reflects on how CARE and CARE-informed data practices interact with current ethics review and data management across Dutch universities.
- The project ‘Beyond personal data: a new initiative to support early-career researchers with hard-to-share data’ with file number ICT.TDCC.001.002, is (partly) financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) via the Thematic Digital Competence Centre Social Sciences & Humanities (TDCC-SSH). Lead organisation: SURF. Partner organisations: DANS, EUR, Leiden University, PNN.
