Videos / What is Research Culture and Why Does it Matter for Interdisciplinary Teams (7:59)

What is Research Culture and Why Does it Matter for Interdisciplinary Teams (7:59)

HDR UK

Healthier Science Through Collaboration

University of Edinburgh

UK Dementia Research Institute

14 July 2026

Last Updated

1 January 2025

This video defines research culture as the unwritten rules of a team, and explains why it is the single most important predictor of success. It introduces the Team Culture Health Check, a simple diagnostic tool to help you assess your own environment.

Learning outcomes:

Define research culture as the shared behaviours, values, and unwritten rules that dictate how a team functions.

Use the Team Culture Health Check to establish a baseline for your own research environment.

Instructors

Dr Ioanna Thoma

Member of the HxC Early Career Researcher Advisory Group, University of Edinburgh

Dr Haolan Tu

Member of the HxC Early Career Researcher Advisory Group, University of Edinburgh

Dr Jacqueline Siu

Member of the HxC Early Career Researcher Advisory Group, University of Oxford

Dr Lorenzo Capitani

Member of the HxC Early Career Researcher Advisory Group, UK Dementia Research Institute

Organisations

HDR UK

Healthier Science Through Collaboration

University of Edinburgh

UK Dementia Research Institute

Nan Fletcher-Lloyd

Member of the HxC Early Career Researcher Advisory Group, Imperial College London

Dr Inna Yaneva-Toraman

HxC Project Manager & Researcher

Inna is an economic anthropologist and interdisciplinary researcher specialising in the global political economy of agri-foods a...

Prof Jane Hillston

HxC Project Lead

Prof Hillston is Chair of Quantitative Modelling and former Head of School (2018–2023) in the School of Informatics. She is Dean...

Prof Chris Ponting

HxC Project Lead

Professor Chris Ponting was appointed as Chair of Medical Bioinformatics, Institute of Genetics and Cancer at the University of ...

Dr Ava Khamseh

HxC Project Lead

Ava Khamseh is a Lecturer in Biomedical AI at the University of Edinburgh, joint at the School of Informatics and the Institute ...

Dr Amonida Zadissa

HxC Project Lead

Amonida joined UK DRI in November 2022 as the Associate Director of Informatics after 2.5 years as the senior strategy officer a...

Dr Hollydawn Murray

HxC Project Lead, HDR UK

Dr Hollydawn Murray (Head of Open Science, Research Culture, & Impact) works closely with the health data science community to s...