Research in a Moon Boot: Taking the Summer Break Literally and Creating a Research Opportunity

Most people use their summer break to relax, travel, and recharge.  Principal Lecturer Lorraine Skelton used hers to write a conference paper while wearing a moon boot.

After a foot injury put her in a medical boot for a month over the summer, Lorraine suddenly found herself with an unexpected pause in her usual routine. While the situation wasn’t ideal, it created the perfect opportunity to focus on something academics rarely get enough uninterrupted time for: research.

Rather than letting the enforced rest slow her down, Lorraine leaned into it. Laptop balanced and moon boot firmly strapped on, she spent the time developing a research paper exploring leadership capability in university–industry collaboration in the age of artificial intelligence.

The result? The paper, “When AI Accelerates What We Already Get Wrong: Leadership Capability in University–Industry Collaboration,” has been accepted to the UIIN Conference (University Industry Innovation Network), one of the leading international forums for collaboration between universities, industry, and innovation ecosystems.

Lorraine’s paper will be presented in the conference stream “Trust & Leadership in Partnerships,” alongside researchers from institutions including C3S Business School and the University of Twente.

The research examines a timely question: as artificial intelligence accelerates how organisations operate, are we also accelerating the weaknesses in how universities and industry collaborate? The paper explores how leadership capability, trust, and partnership structures shape whether these collaborations succeed or stall.

It turns out that sometimes progress comes in unexpected ways. While the moon boot slowed Lorraine down physically, it created the space to accelerate a piece of research now heading onto an international stage.

As Lorraine puts it: “It wasn’t exactly the summer I planned, but sometimes slowing down gives you the time to think more deeply about the work that really matters.”

A reminder that innovation, and occasionally a good research paper, can come from the most unexpected situations.