In episode #225 of The Grant – the EU funding podcast, I sit down with Isabel Burdallo from RISE Processum to talk about something that is essential to research and innovation projects, yet still rarely seen clearly from the outside: the hidden work of research managers. Isabel works for a biorefinery environment in northern Sweden, supporting research and innovation around the valorisation of side streams and residues into bio-based solutions. From that position, she reflects on what research management actually looks like in practice. The role is often mistaken for administration alone — forms, budgets, reporting and compliance — but Isabel explains that the reality is much broader. A big part of the job is translation: translating research ideas into fundable structures, translating funding rules into practical project decisions, and translating institutional constraints into something researchers can actually work with.

What makes this conversation especially strong is the way Isabel names the invisible. She talks about stepping into projects when things are already unstable, fixing procedural or financial risks before they escalate, managing timelines and consortium dynamics, and constantly adapting communication across researchers, management, internal administration and funders. If this work is done well, nobody notices it — and that is exactly part of the problem. We also talk about why the role remains invisible in many organisations, how different national and institutional cultures shape research management, and why professionals in this space need to speak more openly about what they actually do. It becomes a thoughtful conversation about coordination, identity, emotional labour and why research management is not secondary to science, but one of the conditions that allows science to move

Time codes:

02:03 Guest introduction and fly in

05:45 What People Think vs Reality

12:52 The Hidden Tasks – What Actually Happens Behind the Scenes

25:21 Why It’s Invisible and the Human Side

36:47 Navigating and Owning the Role

42:28 Advice

44:08 The toughest challenge