Our culture of innovation, strong community and outstanding facilities will help you achieve your research ambitions.
The Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers
Our culture of innovation, strong community and outstanding facilities will help you achieve your research ambitions.
First published in 2008, and revised in September 2019, the Concordat sets out the expectations and responsibilities of researchers, their managers, employers of researchers and funders, with the aim of enhancing researcher’s career development and the research environment.
Edinburgh Napier is committed to the Principles of the Concordat and became a signatory to the Concordat in December 2019. As a signatory we will undertake regular review and reporting of our progress, and contribute to sharing practice across the sector, helping to ensure ongoing improvement.
We are committed to supporting and developing the careers of our researchers and this commitment has been recognised since 2010 when we first received the EU HR Excellence in Research award. We retained the award in 2023 after our external 12 year review. Our current action plan gives more detail on our priorities over the next review cycle.
We engage with sector wide surveys such as CEDARS to ensure Edinburgh Napier remains a great place to work, with the feedback from these surveys feeding into policy development and tailored support for our research community.
If you are a researcher or research manager with an interest in the Concordat, and you would like to give us feedback on what we should be doing as part of our commitments to the Concordat, do get in touch with us at RIE@napier.ac.uk.
Research excellence 
We are committed to supporting and developing the careers of our researchers and our commitment has been recognised since 2010 when we first received the EU HR Excellence in Research award. We retained the award in 2023 after undergoing our external 12 year review.
In AY2018/19 we launched our Research Promotion Framework, allowing contract research staff at grades 4,5 and 6 to apply for promotion to the grade above. Recent work in AY22/23 has focused on launching a mentoring scheme for research staff and academics across the university, as well as developing workshops that explore career pathways for researchers.
We engage with sector wide surveys such as CEDARS to ensure Edinburgh Napier remains a great place to work, with the feedback from these surveys feeding into policy development and tailored support for our research community.
Research Development Framework 
Using Vitae's Researcher Development Framework as the underpinning structure we have designed a series of events that help Edinburgh Napier University researchers develop as rounded researchers. Full information on our development programmes can be found on the staff intranet.