The Agile Initiative at the Oxford Martin School is running a series of interactive online workshops on the ‘what,’ ‘why,’ and ‘how’ of the research project design components that underpin Agile Sprints. As part of our ongoing commitment to experimentation and capacity building, these workshops will put our learning to date on the research design and planning of our Agile Sprints into practice.

Our series will cover theory of change, co-creation, interdisciplinarity, Equality Impact Assessments, impact, and Sprint leadership and management.

Agile Sprints are an expedited applied research model looking to achieve time sensitive policy impact. We recently issued a call to researchers at Oxford University for Expressions of Interest to respond to policy-maker led research topics. Successful expressions of interest are then turned into full proposals through co-creation by the teams and individuals who applied, the policy-makers who put forward the research topics, other partners and stakeholders, and the programme support team.

This workshop series aims to support those who might be involved in an Agile Sprint from this call or subsequent calls so that their Sprints have the best chance of success from the very start. There is transferable knowledge for those looking to adopt a similar ‘Sprint’ research design approach in other projects.

Agile Initiative Research Planning workshops are for any Oxford University researchers spanning all career stages from postgraduate researchers to senior academics who wish to be involved in Agile. This includes those involved in the current call for Sprints, or who are interested in future calls. We encourage the participation of Oxford University researchers from other research programmes who are interested in applying core components of Agile Sprint research design to their own research practices. Our workshops are also intended for researchers who have worked on previous Agile Sprints, who would like to use the Sprint research design components to inform grant writing and other bids for further funding.

Each topic will be covered in an online, interactive lunchtime workshop, led by a member of the programme support team and an academic with expertise in the relevant area of the Agile Initiative Sprint research planning and design. Workshops will be held on Wednesdays between late April and late May. Active participant engagement is key to these workshops, so you are asked to come prepared to participate, ask questions, and take part in any online activities within the workshops, such as the use of Padlet or Whiteboard.

Please note that the workshops will be recorded to become an externally facing resource.