Managing your research project

Inger Mewburn, Pat Thomson, Helen Kara and Aimee Grant recently published a book, Managing Your Research Project. The Research Whisperers think that it is a handy contribution so we asked the authors if we can publish excerpts from the Introduction. This post is drawn from pages 1-5 of Managing Your Research Project, 1st edition, by Inger Mewburn, Pat Thomson, Helen Kara, and Aimee Grant. Copyright 2026 by Routledge. Reproduced with permission from the Taylor & Francis Group. Photo by Mathieu Stern on Unsplash. Introduction For us, a research project is any activity that involves at least one research task. It could be something small, like a literature review, some interviews or a quick online survey. Or it might be a bigger project like developing a new artifact, program, intervention or product. Research happens in every academic discipline: science, humanities, engineering, medicine, the creative arts and many others. The research activity could take place within a university or…