Stories of Engagers: Reinout Raijmakers on inspiration, money and public engagement

Dr. Reinout Raijmakers is team leader of the Research Support Office (RSO) at the Faculty of Science at Utrecht University. The RSO supports researchers in identifying funding options, writing grant applications and advising on collaboration with companies. 

Can you tell us more about your work? 

“As an RSO, we support researchers in everything related to obtaining external funding for their research. This includes informing researchers about possibilities and developments in the field of research grants, advising on writing grant proposals, providing feedback on project applications from researchers, supporting submission of proposals, advising on and negotiating contracts with external parties such as companies and advising researchers about the possibilities for the valorisation of their research.” 

What is the role of an RSO in the public engagement process? 

“Public engagement plans can be part of grant applications, especially in calls where participation is requested with social partners, such as the calls from NWO for projects within the framework of the National Science Agenda (NWA). It also occasionally happens that researchers specifically seek funding for public engagement activities and ask us for advice on this.” 

How can we ensure that a researcher thinks about a Public Engagement activity at the start of an application? 

“I think there is a question that should precede this one. Not all projects lend themselves equally well to public engagement activities. Therefore, in order to be effective, we must focus primarily on public engagement in projects that are suitable for it and where researchers are also prepared to invest considerable time and energy. ” 

“The first question should therefore be whether a project is suitable for public engagement. If that is the case, it is very useful for us and for researchers to have a portfolio* of possibilities or nice examples. Inspiration is the best way to get people excited. ” 

Have you seen changes in the way grant providers view (the usefulness of) public engagement in recent years? 

“To be honest, only to a limited extent. For me and many others, public engagement is not a separate, well-defined category of activities. Public engagement is part of a broader spectrum of the dissemination of research results. This includes many other activities, such as scientific publications, other forms of science communication and even education. So both we and the grant providers view public engagement activities mainly in the broader picture of all outreach activities that are planned in a project. ” 

How should Utrecht University support researchers in this area? What is your ideal world? 

“In recent years, researchers have seen an increase in tasks to take into account during projects, both financially and in terms of time. Think of matters such as data management, ethics, valorisation and privacy. As a result, researchers have to make choices in spending funding and their time.” 

“I believe the only way for Utrecht University to make bigger steps in public engagement, is to invest significantly more in it. With that I mainly mean making (more) money available for researchers to organise public engagement activities, or even making research funding available for research projects that have a (very) strong public engagement component, which also finances the research itself.”