Building a culture of research: the Psychiatric Research Academy in the region of Southern Denmark

Peter Næsborg Schøler
23 hours ago
11 min read

A description of origins, structure, and ambitions of a regional initiative to develop early-career psychiatric researchers.

Affiliations:

Psychiatric Research Unit Odense-Svendborg, Odense University Hospital, Odense, Denmark.
Psychiatric Research Unit Odense-Svendborg, Department of Clinical Research, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Southern Denmark, Odense University Hospital, Odense, Denmark.
Research Unit of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Clinical Research, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.

Introduction

A sustained focus on research in the day-to-day practice of clinical psychiatry is challenged across mental health care systems globally due to increasing referral rates and demands for fast-track evaluation and diagnostic procedures. This may reduce the motivation of senior researchers to keep up with clinical research and could limit the chance that young mental health care workers wish to pursue a research career. Providing an accessible and stable infrastructure to nurture early-career researchers is, however, a promising way to recruit young clinicians to research. Further, it shortens the distance between a research question that arises in and around psychiatric departments and academic inquiry of that question. Training in research methodology is rarely a formal component of clinical education for most health professionals, yet it is precisely these professionals, who generate the clinical questions that drive the field of psychiatry forward.

In the Region of Southern Denmark, the Psychiatric Research Academy was established specifically to shorten the distance between clinical work and research activity. Rather than functioning as a traditional mono-disciplinary training program, the Academy was conceived as an open, interdisciplinary professional arena: a place where students and young researchers from e.g., medicine, nursing, psychology, pharmacy, social studies, and data management could encounter research culture, develop methodological literacy, establish scientific networks, and begin to situate their clinical curiosity within a rigorous academic framework.

The Research Academy was founded in 2012 in Aarhus as a collaborative project between Professor Povl Munk-Jørgensen and, at the time, medical student Niels Okkels. When Professor Munk-Jørgensen relocated to Odense in 2015, he brought the Academy with him, where it became embedded within the Mental Health Services in the Region of Southern Denmark with the support of the former medical director Anders Meinert whose institutional backing was instrumental in establishing the Academy as a permanent fixture in the region. Since 2023, the Academy has operated under the leadership of Associate Professor and Chief Physician Rikke Wesselhöft (Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry), and in that same year it was formally incorporated into the Region of Southern Denmark's Research Strategy for Psychiatric Research 2023–2027, achieving permanent institutional status across the regional departments of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Adult Psychiatry, and Digital Psychiatry.

This article describes the structure, aims, and activities of the Psychiatric Research Academy in the Region of Southern Denmark, and reflects on its role as a model for capacity-building in clinical psychiatric research.

Logo of the Psychiatric Research Academy.

Background and rationale

The challenge of research capacity in clinical psychiatry

Clinical psychiatric services and university research environments occupy structurally distinct positions in the research ecosystem, and the gap between them is rarely bridged by goodwill alone. University settings offer what regional clinical services largely cannot: protected research time, grant infrastructure, statistical and methodological support, and the critical mass of researchers that makes informal mentorship and peer learning self-sustaining. Regional clinical settings, by contrast, offer something universities cannot: sustained proximity to patients, clinical complexity, and the generation of research questions that emerge directly from the demands of everyday practice. The challenge is not that one setting is superior to the other – each possesses what the other lacks – it is rather the distance between the two, which often leads to clinicians focusing little on research and researchers being unaware of the most relevant clinical problems. Without a deliberate infrastructure providing a joint interdisciplinary professional arena for discussing research, the clinically generated questions that can help drive psychiatric research forward often remain unanswered.

The Psychiatric Research Academy was conceived precisely with this purpose. One of its founding ambitions was to restore something that busy clinical environments systematically erode: an arena for slow, deliberate, academic thinking. Not sabbatical or protected research positions, which typical clinical work cannot offer, but a recurring, bound interval in which the pace of clinical work is suspended, and a different mode of engagement becomes possible. To this end, the Academy actively bridges the structural divide by involving expertise from the University of Southern Denmark, whose staff and researchers contribute presentations and workshops on methodology, literature searching, reference management, and academic writing. The Academy thus functions neither as a university satellite nor as an isolated regional initiative, but as a deliberately constructed interface between two environments that need each other more than current health system architecture tends to acknowledge.

The Psychiatric Research Academy

Mission

The Academy operates with a dual mission that is deliberately structured to address two typical formative challenges in early-career researcher development, which is not limited to psychiatry. The first mission emphasizes the development of individual research competencies, particularly the craft of academic writing, but also knowledge dissemination, oral presentation, research integrity, methodological understanding, and critical appraisal of scientific literature. The second mission holds a broader perspective: the cultivation of a shared research culture across professional boundaries, enabling participants from diverse educational backgrounds to explore how research may be a meaningful part of their professional future, encounter contemporary methodological discourse, and build cross-disciplinary networks that sustain long-term academic engagement.

Crucially, participation in the Academy does not require a prior commitment to an academic career. It functions as much as an introduction to research culture as a training program for future researchers providing a space in which curiosity is sufficient grounds for membership.

Structure and format

The Academy convenes twice a month in a recently (2026) introduced hybrid format, allowing participants to join in person or remotely. Each session starts with brief personal introductions to foster active engagement. This ensures that participants have a clear and transparent sense of who is attending and evaluating their work. Sessions are structured in two consecutive and independently accessible components, each aligned with one dimension of the Academy's dual mission.

The first component is the Scientific Writing Club, dedicated to the craft of academic writing as a learnable and improvable skill. Prior to each session, one participant circulates a piece of work – an article draft, grant application, research protocol, abstract, or other scholarly text – which the group reads in advance and prepares feedback on. The scientific writing session is structured around constructive, open, and collegial critique of the text, with the submitting participant as the primary recipient of feedback. The culture of the Scientific Writing Club is deliberately supportive: the aim is to create a psychologically safe environment in which honest and well-intended critique can be both given and received. Beyond the focal manuscript, sessions regularly incorporate shared resources such as articles, videos, and practical guides as well as discussion of writing strategies, tools, and techniques applicable across different genres of academic output.

The Scientific Writing Club is further complemented by dedicated writing retreats, organized in collaboration with a language expert and copy editor from the University of Southern Denmark; a native English-speaking writing teacher who also leads standalone sessions on academic writing (Claire Gudex). These retreats extend the learning environment beyond the regular meeting format, providing participants with sustained time, expert guidance, and a structured setting with peers in which to make meaningful progress on their own work.

The second component of each academy meeting, the Young Researchers Club, follows immediately after and takes a broader view of what it means to develop as a researcher. These sessions address competencies that are rarely taught explicitly in clinical training such as how to search the literature systematically, how to use artificial intelligence tools responsibly in a research context, how to design and present a conference poster or oral presentation, how to take effective notes, and how to navigate academic conferences and professional networks. The format is more open and discussion-based than the Scientific Writing Club, reflecting its function as a shared learning forum. Knowledge-sharing from conferences or seminars that participants have recently attended is actively encouraged, reinforcing a culture of collective professional development that extends beyond the walls of the session itself.

Attendance typically ranges from ten to fifteen participants per session. Both components are open independently, and members may attend one or both according to their availability at any given time.

*Scientific Writing Club of the Psychiatric Research Academy.*

Membership and participation

The Academy is open to all students and early-career researchers in the Region of Southern Denmark with an interest in psychiatry, regardless of professional background or prior research experience. Participants from medicine, nursing, pharmacy, psychology, social studies, and data science have all contributed to the Academy's activities. This deliberate cross-disciplinary design reflects the understanding that psychiatric research is enriched both methodologically and epistemologically by disciplinary diversity.

There is no formal enrolment requirement for the Academy. Contact and coordination are maintained by the Academy secretary.

Institutional embedding and impact

The incorporation of the Psychiatric Research Academy into the Region of Southern Denmark's Research Strategy for Psychiatric Research 2023–2027 represents a significant institutional development. Rather than remaining a semi-informal initiative dependent on individual frontrunners, the Academy has achieved structural permanence within the regional health system, formally encompassing all three psychiatric departments: Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Adult Psychiatry, and Digital Psychiatry. Activities and outputs are reported annually through the regional research report for psychiatric research, situating the Academy within a broader accountability framework.

Further information on the Academy is presented on the Academy’s website (link) and through the Academy’s LinkedIn page (link).

Discussion

The dual architecture as a deliberate design choice: two common formative challenges, one intervention

The dual structure of the Psychiatric Research Academy: Scientific Writing Club followed by Young Researchers Club, maps onto two distinct formative challenges in early-career researcher development that are rarely addressed by the same intervention. The first is a challenge of craft: the struggle to turn clinical observations or research findings into well-structured, publishable academic text. The second is a challenge of socialization: not knowing how research works in practice e.g., the unwritten rules, the professional networks, and the day-to-day competencies that are rarely taught formally but are essential to becoming a good researcher. Most institutional solutions address one or the other. The Academy’s design addresses both, in sequence, within the same community of practice.

Psychological safety and the culture of critique

The Scientific Writing Club's emphasis on constructive, open, and caring feedback is not incidental. It reflects a genuine challenge in academic culture, where critique is often experienced as evaluation rather than collaboration, and often simplified into a question of right or wrong.

From founding figure to institutional structure: a transition worth examining

What does it take to outlast your founder? The Academy was founded by, and for many years associated with, a single person, namely professor emeritus Povl Munk-Jørgensen. Its formalization in 2023 under new leadership and anchoring within the regional research strategy represents a transition from an individual-based to a structural model of sustainability and a transition that many similar initiatives fail to make. This transition cannot be understood solely as either a planned internal organizational development or an externally driven adaptation. While there was a deliberate effort to broaden the Academy and strengthen its organizational foundation, the process also unfolded alongside evolving expectations regarding clinical psychiatric research, including increased emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration, user involvement, and integration across regional and university-based research environments. In this sense, the Academy’s sustainability was enabled both by formalization and by its ability to preserve core elements of the founding vision, such as collegiality and accessibility, while adapting its structure and positioning over time. Importantly, this included strengthening its dual anchoring across clinical and academic settings, which has been central to its capacity-building role. This combination of continuity and adaptation, alongside explicit organizational embedding across regional and university boundaries, appears to have been central to the Academy’s ability to sustain and further develop its original ambitions over time.

How do you measure culture?

The Academy's impact is currently documented through the annual regional research report. While this remains a meaningful form of institutional accountability, it is also worth asking what that report can and cannot capture. Publications, protocols, and conference abstracts are countable; the development of research identity, the decision to pursue a PhD, and the confidence gained from having one's first manuscript read, discussed by peers, and published, are not.

What drives these shifts? Opportunities for growth only matter if people feel safe enough to act on them. The Academy is designed to offer those opportunities. That is, to learn, connect, and try things that feel uncertain or unfamiliar. But the environment alone is not enough. Whether a new member dares to share a half-finished manuscript or ask a question they fear sounds naive depends as much on the culture in the room as on the formal program. This places a real and ongoing responsibility on the Academy's members to maintain a welcoming and non-judgmental community.

Transferability: what would it take to replicate this?

For readers in other regions or health systems who might wish to establish something similar to the Research Academy, it is worth being explicit about the enabling conditions: a senior researcher willing to invest sustained personal energy in a non-mandatory initiative; a regional health system with an interest in research capacity as a strategic priority; a university partner able to contribute with writing and methodological expertise; and a critical mass of early-career researchers willing to participate in something without immediate career reward and without protected time to do so.

Beyond these foundational elements, the experience of the Academy highlights the importance of actively shaping how the initiative evolves over time through shared ownership. This means building structures that reduce dependence on any single person's drive or commitment, so that the Academy can sustain itself through changes in leadership or membership. It also means paying ongoing attention to how the Academy is positioned within both clinical and academic settings, ensuring it remains relevant and meaningful to participants while continuing to nurture the next generation of researchers

Some members of the Psychiatric Research Academy. Top row, from left: Katrine Marcussen, Sarah Jakobsen, Amalie Thea Jensen, Rikke Wesselhöft, and Camilla Dahl Haislund Olsen. Front row, from left: Peter N. Schøler, Anne Marie Lundskov Knudsen, Katrine Ulrikke Madsen, and Rebekka Nøvik Stavrum.

Conclusion

The Psychiatric Research Academy is not a grand institution. It is a Wednesday afternoon, a manuscript read aloud, a question asked without embarrassment, and a junior researcher who leaves the room a little more certain that they belong in it. And yet, the cumulative effect of those afternoons is anything but small.

For clinical leaders and research administrators, the case is straightforward: the pipeline from curious clinician or student to independent researcher does not build itself. It requires deliberate investment in the spaces where that transformation quietly happens. The Academy is one of those spaces and it is tested, refined over years, and ready to grow.

The future growth depends on sustained commitment. From the Region of Southern Denmark, from the psychiatric research departments of Child- and Adolescence, Adult-, and Digital Psychiatry, and from the University of Southern Denmark. Not commitment in the abstract, but the kind that shows up in specific, practical ways: making research pathways visible to clinicians early in their careers, so that curiosity about research does not quietly disappear under the weight of a full clinical schedule. It looks like protected time — even an afternoon — that makes participation a real offer rather than an aspirational one. It looks like clearer pipelines between clinical and research roles, so that a clinician who begins at the Academy can see a path forward, and a researcher who returns to the clinic does not lose their footing in either world. And it looks like formal anchoring of the Academy within the structures that shape early careers such as PhD programs, specialist training, departmental research strategies, so that membership becomes a natural step rather than a fortunate accident.

The Academy cannot carry this alone, nor should it. What it can do, and has done, is create the conditions in which research identity takes root. The institutions around it are best placed to ensure those conditions reach the people who have not yet found their way in.

Because the Academy is not only a starting point. For many members, it has been a place to return to across years and a community that grows with them, from first manuscript to independent researcher. The conditions are here. The researchers are here. What remains is for the institutions that surround the Academy to keep choosing, concretely and repeatedly, to invest in both.

Acknowledgements

We thank professor emeritus Povl Munk-Jørgensen for founding the Academy and for his years of dedicated leadership, which laid the foundation for everything described here. We thank Claire Gudex, writing instructor at the University of Southern Denmark, for her contributions to the Academy's scientific writing program. We also thank Nicolai Gundtoft Uhrenholt for the encouragement to write this piece on the history and implications of the Psychiatric Research Academy.