Social responsibility
Social responsibility at the heart of what we do, it is embedded in our research and we actively engage with our audiences, whether local, national, or international. We are committed to making a difference through our research and outreach activities.
Our research naturally contributes to creating a cleaner, greener, and healthier world and population, but we constantly push the boundaries of what we do to further our knowledge and drive our outputs towards application.
To help us structure our research we organise it according to the four key social responsibility themes defined in the University's social responsibility strategy. Here we have gathered together four case studies of where our research has had impact within these areas.
Public and community engagement
We run a comprehensive programme of public engagement activities where members of the public get to meet our researchers and interact with our research. These events and activities have two core aims:
- To engage with a broad, non-specialist audience, and introduce them to our research and what that means for them in their daily lives. While many people visit museums, science festivals, or have friends and family involved in science who they can talk to, others have less access to science in their day-to-day lives. To combat this, we try to take our programme of events to places where people would not normally encounter science and give them the opportunity to explore our research and its outcomes in a comfortable and accessible environment.
- To allow as many researchers from as many different backgrounds as possible to discuss their work with the wider community. We recognise that in most academic environments, only a small number of researchers get involved in outreach and engagement activities. This can be due to a limited range of opportunities or barriers faced by the researchers themselves. For this reason, we provide a wide range of engagement opportunities relevant to our diverse researcher community.
We are always looking for new ways to interact with people outside of academia, if you are looking to get involved with what we do, have an idea for an event, would like us to attend your event or area then here are just some of the things we can help with:
- Table-top activities for national science shows and exhibitions
- Museum and school visits
- Community events
- Multilingual events
- Collaborations with artists
- Hands-on, practical activities
- Science and research talks
- Online course creation
Please do get in touch with us if you would like any more information.
