Dr Colin Tattam, Director of the N8 Research Partnership reflects on his first weeks in the role since joining the partnership in June 2026.
In my first weeks as Director of the N8 Research Partnership, I have had the privilege of visiting all our member universities and meeting senior leaders, researchers and professional colleagues. These early conversations, alongside the opportunity to begin engaging with partners across the wider N8 network, have provided valuable insight into both the strengths of the partnership and the opportunities that lie ahead.
My main aim has been to begin understanding where the next phase of opportunity for N8 lies, building on its 20-year legacy and identifying where the partnership can add the greatest value.
Through these visits, I have been struck by the breadth and depth of research excellence and innovation across the N8 universities. Each institution is strong in its own right, and that made a clear impression. More striking still was the potential offered by continued collaboration: the opportunity for our members to do more together than they could achieve alone, and the clear recognition from colleagues and partners that this matters.
There is strong support for N8 and for the value of pan-Northern collaboration, alongside a healthy appetite for greater focus. My conversations have made clear that the next phase of N8 is not about duplicating what already exists locally or sub-regionally, but about adding distinct value where collective action can make a real difference.
This focus is particularly important as the wider landscape continues to change. Greater devolution, stronger mayoral institutions and an increasing emphasis on place-based growth and investment are reshaping how decisions are made.
The publication of UKRI’s new Strategy and Delivery Plan is therefore particularly timely. Its mission to advance knowledge, improve lives and drive growth is supported by a strong emphasis on research excellence, strategic national and societal priorities, business growth, place, partnership and delivery. It also points towards greater selectivity, more integrated interventions and stronger connections between discovery, application and economic and societal outcomes. There is much here that resonates with the conversations taking place across N8.
For N8, I see the next phase as one in which we create new opportunities that combine research and innovation excellence, national strategic importance, a distinctive Northern opportunity or need, and a credible route to investment and delivery.
N8’s great advantage is not simply the aggregate scale of eight research-intensive universities. It lies in the combinations we can create across disciplines, institutions and places: connecting world-class research with specialist infrastructure, skills, industrial capability and regional partnerships around major national opportunities.
That is where N8 can be most useful: helping to identify where collective action can make a real difference, making Northern research and innovation capability more visible and accessible, and helping turn complementary strengths into propositions, partnerships and opportunities that are relevant to government, funders, industry and investors.
As I continue discussions with our Board, Strategic Executive Group and the many collaborators and contributors who make up the N8 network, I’m excited by the potential. The challenge now is to make good choices: focusing where N8 can genuinely add value, developing fewer but more ambitious opportunities, and working with partners across government, funding agencies, industry and the wider innovation system to turn Northern strengths into national outcomes.