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The National Archives is lucky enough to 
have been awarded Independent Research Organisation 
status, and that's by the UK research councils.

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And what that means is, it's a recognition 
of the standing and status of the institution 
as a research institution.

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And that enables us to do things like apply 
for funding, which is really important for 
the research work we do.

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Independent Research Organisation status 
is really important to us but for me, it's 
really a stepping stone towards where we 
want to be

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Which is a really radical shift in the institution's 
reputation and status as a research institution

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To something with a real international reputation 
for interdisciplinary research and really 
pioneering and innovative exploration of 
new thinking in archives.

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The research we do at The National Archives 
really strongly underpins our strategic objectives 
which are seen in our strategy Archives Inspire.

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So we've identified digital as a really big 
challenge, the major challenge for us at 
The National Archives.

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To really address that challenge we need 
to be innovative and to be innovative we 
need to do research.

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So research absolutely sits at the core of 
what we do at The National Archives.

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And that's also true of Archives Unlocked, 
which is the government policy on archives. 
So our challenges are also the archive sector's 
challenges.

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So anything we can do with research and innovative 
technologies and tools that we can disseminate 
out to the sector

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Fufills our leadership role and really enables 
us to deliver that archive policy on behalf 
of the sector.

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For me, research needs to do two things. 
So the research strategy is really to take 
forward The National Archives into a place 
where

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We're a brilliant organisation with brilliant 
staff doing really brilliant research

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Where people are really beating up after 
our door to work for us, so that's one thing 
I want to achieve.

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But the second thing I want is for us to 
actually achieve something with that research.

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So for that research to really start to come 
up with some solutions to the challenges 
that we're facing.

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So that we can start to address some of the 
really difficult issues that we're having 
to address in the archives sector.