“It is a rare opportunity to focus on your development and foster research collaborations without the usual pressures.”

Congratulations to our latest Crucible Cohort for officially completing their Crucible journey with the Horizons Institute!

Over a series of intensive residential workshops, this group of independently funded fellows and early-career lecturers from across the White Rose universities (Leeds, Sheffield, and York) threw themselves into new, innovative ways of thinking and working.

A dedicated space for interdisciplinary innovation

The Crucible programme is uniquely designed to bring researchers together in a supportive and intellectually stimulating interdisciplinary space. With the help of experienced facilitators and bespoke interventions, these competitively selected future research leaders looked far beyond their individual disciplines to build their portfolio of skills, tease out commonalities, and spark new collaborative ideas.

By participating in the programme, the cohort has:

• Explored career enhancement through interdisciplinary and cross-institutional research leadership.
• Engaged in creative knowledge exchange by participating in facilitated sessions and hearing from inspiring guest speakers.
• Gained a lifelong cross-institutional community of peers ready to tackle complex challenges together with openness, breadth, and vision.

The Crucible experience

The White Rose Crucible Programme offers an excellent opportunity to consider new approaches to research, enhance leadership potential, and network with peers and experts from across Yorkshire and beyond. 

The programme structure is built around three core pillars:

• Participants gain the rare time and space to think deeply about their personal development. The programme demonstrates how integrating different disciplines from the very start of a project can enrich research outputs and attract major funding.
• Connecting academics across Leeds, Sheffield, and York allows researchers to explore how working outside their traditional silos can enhance their careers, increase research impact, and help them grow as modern research leaders.
• The programme consists of three intensive 2-day residential workshops, known as Labs. These workshops combine expert-led sessions, inspiring speakers, and ample unstructured time for collaboration to encourage true openness and long-term shifts in creative thinking.

Seed funding for future impact

The journey doesn’t end with the final workshop! To help bring the innovative ideas that emerged during the programme to life, participants are now eligible to apply for up to £8K in funding to launch their collaborative projects.

We cannot wait to see how these future leaders shape the research landscape in the years to come.