Cox, BLocke, KSharp, ERayne, AWalker, LSteeves, T2024-02-072024-02-072023-11-20New Zealand Geographer, ISSN: 0028-8144 (Print); 1745-7939 (Online), Wiley, 79(3), 201-212. doi: 10.1111/nzg.123790028-81441745-7939http://hdl.handle.net/10292/17193The ‘research system’ in Aotearoa New Zealand is rife with obstacles for entry and retention of diversity. The research system's complexity and longevity gives the impression of stability and fixity, but we argue it is characterised by a lack of imagination around leadership that generates change. In this article, we examine the embodied experiences of research leadership, as encountered by participants at Aotearoa New Zealand's universities and a nationally funded Centre of Research Excellence. It is within such institutions and organisations, built on colonial and patriarchal values, that experiences of marginalisation, oppression and harassment have been documented. We destabilise the apparently static nature of this ‘research system monolith’ by taking up MacLeavy, Fannin and Larner's (2021) provocation of a feminist approach to boldly do leadership differently. Drawing from interviews with researchers, we argue that resistance to, and reworking of, the research system can be found in feminist modes of practice: in the everyday, mundane practices of care-full research leadership that do leadership differently.© 2023 The Authors. New Zealand Geographer published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of New Zealand Geographical Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/4406 Human Geography44 Human Society0406 Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience1302 Curriculum and Pedagogy1604 Human GeographyGeography3709 Physical geography and environmental geoscience4406 Human geographyJournal ArticleOpenAccess10.1111/nzg.12379