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Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8912-8400

Abstract

As a recently established technological university, Atlantic Technological University continues to evolve its research structures across a distributed, multi-campus environment. As is common in post-merger contexts, there are opportunities to further strengthen cross-campus engagement, collegiality and inclusion. This paper presents a practice-based, research-informed analysis of Research Network formation at ATU, developed under the RISE@ATU programme. It demonstrates how such networks can serve as social infrastructure to support researcher wellbeing, connection and collaboration within a post-merger technological university, with particular relevance to other regionally distributed higher education institutions. The analysis is informed by institutional experience, including a university-wide researcher engagement campaign undertaken at ATU, and is interpreted alongside relevant international literature. The paper identifies four mechanisms through which Research Networks can strengthen researcher connection and community: regular cross-campus engagement, peer-to-peer mentoring, recognition practices that value collaboration, and intentionally designed informal interactions that sustain human connection in hybrid and AI-mediated environments, referred to here as the risk of ‘AIsolation’. Building on these practice-informed mechanisms, the paper concludes by outlining design principles that can guide Research Network development across comparable institutions, aligned with European Research Area priorities on healthy research cultures and careers. Overall, this practice-based contribution advances theory by conceptualising Research Networks as a form of social infrastructure within higher education, and supports practice by offering a transferable framework for strengthening researcher wellbeing, inclusion and collaboration in post-merger and regionally distributed university contexts.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

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