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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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