Background#
Note: Research Community Manager (RCM) is a role that continues to be practised across research communities worldwide. The Turing’s Open Research Community Management team, which this page also describes, operated between 2022 and 2026 and is now historic.
Building communities in data science is crucial for bringing together diverse stakeholders, enabling knowledge exchange, and co-creating a collaborative system in which AI research can thrive. This vision is realised by integrating Research Community Managers (RCMs) into projects where multiple internal and external stakeholders are involved. As the most visible and best-connected members of a project, RCMs apply open research and community management approaches to foster Communities of Practice.
The Turing’s RCM team#
At the Turing, this vision was realised through the Open Research Community Management team, which was part of the Tools, Practices and Systems (TPS) research programme. The team was established in 2022 and operated until 2026. It was led by Malvika Sharan from 2022 to 2024 and by Emma Karoune from 2025 to 2026. Its guiding statement described the RCM role as follows:
Research Community Managers empower the diverse stakeholders of a research community to co-create, maintain and sustain data science projects and outputs that they can equitably benefit from.
The role in practice#
The Turing’s Community Management and Open Research programme page describes RCMs as professionals who foster a collaborative environment where a diverse research and data science community can actively engage, get recognition, and build shared agency over their work. At the Turing, RCMs were distributed across Missions and projects. Wherever they work, RCMs:
embed open, inclusive, and reproducible research practices in the teams, projects, and programmes they join;
build a shared understanding of research goals, roadmaps, and processes through collaboration, upskilling, and resource development;
make implicit knowledge explicit so that everyone who wants to can participate; and
connect research with national and international data science communities, often as research technical professionals.
Read the Turing’s programme page for the Institute’s own description, and the team page for the projects the Turing’s RCMs supported.
Where to go next#
Read the goals of RCM work to see what RCMs set out to achieve.
See the impact of RCMs for what the role delivered in practice.
Read the values and principles that shaped how the Turing’s RCM team worked.
Find out how the team contributed to The Turing Way.
Learn more about the team.