DisCouRSE projects share their outcomes in a lightning talk session

Our friends at the DisCouRSE NetworkPlus, one of our fellow UKRI Digital Research Infrastructure projects, have published a write-up of their recent lightning talk session, where the leads and co-leads of their funded projects came together online to share what they have been doing. It is a nice snapshot of the breadth of community-led activity that DisCouRSE is supporting, and comes with a useful list of resources that anyone working in the digital research community may want to bookmark.

A quick look at what happened at the session, and the resources that came out of it.

Bringing the cohort together

The session, held on 30 July, gave each of the DisCouRSE-funded projects a short slot to talk through their key activities, achievements and challenges so far. Importantly, it also welcomed the projects newly funded through DisCouRSE’s second funding round, so new and existing project teams could meet, compare notes and learn from each other’s experiences.

Beyond the individual updates, the session was designed to draw out common themes and potential synergies across the cohort, and to gather feedback that will help shape future DisCouRSE funding rounds. DisCouRSE describe it as a valuable forum for projects to connect and spot opportunities for future collaboration, and the range of work on show highlights just how varied the activity across the cohort is.

If you would like to see what each project presented, the combined slides from the session have been published on the DisCouRSE Zenodo community.

Resources worth knowing about

One of the most useful parts of the write-up is the list of communities, resources and opportunities that projects shared during the session. Several of these will be of interest well beyond the DisCouRSE cohort:

• PeerLadder — a platform supporting peer learning and mentoring.
• SpatiaLondon — a community offering workshops and opportunities to get involved.
• Cohort Based Open Leadership Training and Mentoring — a case study from the 2026 cohort of SSI fellows.
• SSI Fellowship Programme 2027 — applications are open now and close on 5 October, so if you have been thinking about applying, this is the time.
• Research Coding Community — a community and collection of resources for research coding.
• DRTP Operational Management Community of Practice — a community of practice for digital research technical professionals leading operational and service management, itself an output of a DisCouRSE-funded project.

Find out more

• Read the full write-up on the DisCouRSE website
• Combined presentation slides from the session on Zenodo
• Browse the DisCouRSE-funded projects

Sessions like this, where funded projects share openly with each other and with the wider community, are exactly the kind of knowledge exchange that helps the DRI landscape join up. Congratulations to DisCouRSE and to all the project teams who presented, and do take a look at the resources above if any of them are new to you.