Celebrating Innovation and Entrepreneurship
The research and teaching groups and their constituent centres/networks seek to maximise research impact though direct engagement with beneficiaries employing traditional and innovative methods.
For example, the PASCAL Observatory engages with 2000+ academics, policymakers and staff from non-governmental organisations and civil society, publishing a daily online newspaper and weekly digest, and inviting online contributions and comments from subscribers.
Several research projects have employed innovative collaborative action research methodologies, for example in marrying school improvement with other forms of public service improvement and using consultative participatory methods. We’ve shared information on these participatory research methods via animations and podcasts, for example, within the Centre for Sustainable, Healthy, Learning Cities and Neighbourhoods (SHLC).
We embrace opportunities to provide research evidence to inform policymaker and practitioners. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we were particularly active in responding to Scottish Government calls for evidence, for or example, conducting a survey of teachers’ views on the impact of school closures with recommendations for planning. Our staff sit on a large number of advisory groups in governments and other bodies in order to influence policymakers in the UK and beyond.
Other innovative routes to impact include public events in the ESRC Festival of Social Science, such as working with children and parents at IKEA to generate and represent literacy data from our work on education and disadvantage in the major ESRC-funded Urban Big Data Centre using moving maps, digital quizzes, and personalised badges.
