Environment submissions database

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted our research environment and impact from our research. From March 2020 enhanced guidance on remote/online teaching was rapidly developed by our academic staff teams. This necessitated taking colleagues away from the development of their research to focus on transforming the approach to teaching delivery. During the lockdown staff were also adapting to an unprecedented change in their working patterns and pedagogies. Many had children or dependents to care for, and limited suitable spaces to work in. Inevitably, some staff adapted more quickly and effectively to the demands of online/remote delivery than others. Laboratories were closed and so face-to-face research requiring specialist laboratory facilities has been interrupted and unable to progress. This has affected progress of industry-funded research programmes requiring our campus laboratories (e.g. research funded by Western Clinical Engineering Ltd investigating blood flow restriction training). We also have a number of industry-housed research programmes which have been affected based on closures or restrictions being enforced in these contexts. This includes research at the Royal Ballet Company, at professional football clubs, and in hospitals. Impact from research has also been affected. Our researchers were scheduled to deliver research-informed educational workshops in schools, yet have been unable to do so given lockdown and school closures. Our research has realised impact at the English Institute of Sport, however the postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics means that further potential evidence of impact has not been possible. The actualisation of impact has also been affected in relation the case study – Creating an Exhibition within Historic Royal Palaces in Unit 27. The COVID pandemic lead to the cancelation of the exhibition at Hampton Court Palace and, therefore, the impact of this exhibition on the public understanding of the importance of the Festival, could not be gathered. Research students have also been affected by the pandemic, either personally, through unemployment or furlough, or by not being able to access resources, such as laboratories, archives and libraries. This has led to almost 30% of our doctoral students delaying their studies and taking leave of absence from their programme. The knock-on effect of these interruptions will mean that potentially over a quarter of our PGR students will not complete in the normal prescribed time period for their programme. St Mary’s is in receipt of the recent allocation of UKRI additional QR RDP funding which it will use to supplement the PGR hardship fund that it set up in March 2020.