By Matthew Brown and Liam McKervey
Matthew Brown is Professor in Latin American History in the Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences and chair of the University Ethics of Research Committee.
Liam McKervey is Research Ethics and Integrity Manager in DREI.
“Research Ethics” can often be thought of as a form to be filled in, a committee to appease, an obstacle to be surmounted before “research” can be begun. Three changes introduced this summer will make these processes part of our everyday institutional conversation about what we do, who we do it with, and how we do it.
1. More consistency across our Research Ethics Committees
In June 2025 we launched our newly restructured committee review system, after two years of planning, consultation and preparation. To rounds of applause from participants at the annual Bristol Research Ethics Workshop (BREW25), Liam McKervey (Research Ethics and Integrity Manager) pressed a button on the Online Research Ethics Management System (OREMS) and the new system was live. From now on all staff and postgraduate research applications for Research Ethics review will go to a single, university-wide committee staffed with representatives from across all three faculties, rather than specific disciplinary, School or Faculty committees. The expectation is that this will produce better and more consistent decision-making, avoid system-gaming, and reduce delays, workloads and frustration. We will be monitoring the new system through the summer and 2025/26 so please send any feedback, questions or recommendations to us at research-ethics@bristol.ac.uk.
2. Sharing best practice
Every School and Faculty will have a Research Ethics Officer as part of the new system, whose role is to identify best practice and share it with colleagues whether through conversation or training provision. Rather than reviewing projects or sharing committees, School and Faculty Research Ethics Officers will be there for informal guidance and dialogue, enabling us to see the bigger ethical picture around their research, whether it involves human participants or not. Dr. Anita Mangan, the new Research Ethics Officer for the Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences, spoke at BREW25 about how she sees her new role and how it might help researchers in her faculty. Anita’s equivalent in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences is Dr Lindsay Nicholson. Recruitment in the Faculty of Science and Engineering is in progress and a list of School Research Ethics Officers will be available to view in September.
3. Developing consistent guidance and principles
One of the most exciting elements of the new system is the way it will make it much easier for us to identify grey areas around particular ethical issues where the development of some guidance for researchers would be helpful. This will remove the current situation where researchers try to second guess what a committee would or would not like, sometimes misinterpreting committee opinions and having to redesign their methodology. The new university-wide committees are encountering areas of existing divergent practice, which they need to review. For example, some Schools have encouraged paying participants in cash, others in vouchers, and others have thought that paying participants is unethical. Clearly some guidance as to what the Research Ethics Committees will consider appropriate, or not, will be very useful, and there are many areas where we foresee the development of guidance in the short-term, for example around Artificial Intelligence, which was the theme of a stimulating round-table at BREW25 led by Dr Panos Maghsoudlou, Chair of the ALSPAC Law and Ethics Committee. The guidance on ethical research with AI will sit alongside existing guidance notes on working with participants who take illegal drugs, and working with schools, for example. The aim in all of these is not to be prohibitive or proscriptive, but rather to acknowledge the range of ways of doing ethical research and making best practice available to researchers at an early stage.
All in all, 2024/25 has been a packed and transformative year in the life of Research Ethics at Bristol. We thank Clare McDonnell and Peter Whittall, two of our independent committee members who have come to the end of long terms of service, and who have been integral to supporting the changes we have introduced. We are also tremendously grateful to all of the Research Ethics committee members whose work in this area means that the University of Bristol has a Research Ethics review system of which it can be proud, and where continual reflection and improvement are central to our mission.
If you would like to get more involved in Research Ethics space, or if you have an idea for new guidance or ways of working, do get in touch with Liam McKervey at research-ethics@bristol.ac.uk or the chair of the University Ethics of Research Committee, Matthew Brown at matthew.brown@bristol.ac.uk.