Think: Public Engagement with Research
University of Birmingham
It’s National Clean Air Day on 21st June and there will be an event held on campus to highlight and celebrate all the great work going on at the University around the subject of air pollution – whilst also engaging staff, students and the local community.
If you would like your research to be featured, or for more information on the day please contact Peter Edwards on P.Edwards.1@bham.ac.uk.
For further information on the national initiative please click here.
An evening on the 23rd May 2018 exploring, facilitating and initiating collaborations between scientists, artists, creatives, academics and curious organisms of all varieties. We will be investigating public engagement opportunities across sectors, debating their value and hopefully fostering some new collaborative projects.
Leading the evening is Charlotte Jarvis, an artist who collaborates with scientists and lectures at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College. Charlotte has seen her own heart beat outside of her body, grown her own cancer in a dish and recorded music onto DNA.
The event is being held at the Digital Humanities Hub at the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2SD from 17:45 to 21:00.
To avoid disappointment we kindly request that you register (for free) as places are limited, click here to register.
Evening Schedule:
WORLDS COLLIDE is open to:
Please note: This event is not open to professional services staff at the University unless they work in a brokering role, please contact engage@contacts.bham.ac.uk if you have queries
Are you involved with public engagement in higher education? Do you have an inspiring image you want to share?
The NCCPE is delighted to launch a new national competition, Images of Public Engagement 2018.
We want to invite you to join in with the NCCPE’s 10th anniversary celebrations and help us capture the breadth of fantastic public engagement work taking place throughout UK universities. From collaborative research to culture change, our image competition offers the opportunity to celebrate and share what public engagement means to you.
Whether you’re an engaged academic, student, public engagement professional or someone who partners with universities, we’d love to see your images and stories of public engagement. This is a chance to share inspiring engagement activities, culture change initiatives, and the people involved in public engagement.
Submit your image by 16th July and be in with a chance of winning a ticket for the NCCPE’s Engage Conference, or new photography and art materials!
Winning entries will also be showcased as part of our 10th anniversary celebrations, featuring on our website and in a new-look Manifesto for Public Engagement.
Find out more & apply on the NCCPE website
For any enquiries, please email laura2.steele@uwe.ac.uk.
Just before Easter Elsevier launched the Researchers’ Choice Communication Award RCCA #RCCA2018. They’d be delighted if you would encourage your faculty departments and your student groups to nominate their outstanding early career researchers and peers via Mendeley, the social network for scientists. There are several ways you can do this:
You can also follow Elsevier on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn for the latest updates and more shareable content.
The winner, chosen by their judging panel, will be announced at the awards ceremony in the presence of UK research leaders and the CEO of Elsevier on 4th October at the Royal Society in London. Chairman of the ceremony is President and Vice-Chancellor of Cardiff University and Fulbright Commissioner, Professor Colin Riordan.
Nominating a researcher for the RCCA – How does it work?
The winner will be announced at this year’s Awards ceremony at the Royal Society in London on 4th October 2018.
We’re thrilled to be launching two exciting new public engagement opportunities for University of Birmingham staff and students:
FOR ACADEMIC STAFF WORKING IN STEM:
YOUR RESEARCH EXHIBITED AT THINKTANK SCIENCE MUSEUM’S ‘FUTURES GALLERY’?
The University is offering one researcher/research group a rare and exciting opportunity to work alongside curators and design team at Birmingham Thinktank Science Museum to bring to life their research as part of an inspiring and innovative long-running exhibit within the museum’s Futures Gallery, to be installed in early 2019.
We are now seeking expressions of interest from University of Birmingham academics who would like to make greater public impact through providing audiences access to contemporary science, whilst also gaining meaningful experience in museum-researcher collaboration and the cultural sector.
Full details of the call and how to apply HERE (Deadline for EoI: Friday 13th April, 2018)
Eligibility: This scheme is open to academic research-active staff in the College of Medical & Dental Sciences, College of Engineering & Physical Sciences and College of Life and Environmental Sciences. The callout is not open to postgraduate students.
FOR MASTERS/PHD STUDENTS
LAPWORTH LATES – PGRs needed!
The public engagement team are looking for a small interdisciplinary team of research students (masters or PhD) to co-design, organise and run a new public evening event involving academics and artists in the Lapworth Museum. You will be responsible for programming and budgeting for activities (with our support!) to help bring the museum and its exhibits alive for the public at our inaugural Lapworth Lates event.
The event will run on Thursday 19th July 2018. In addition to committing to design and organisation activities, you will also need to be available for around 4 planning/operations meetings between April and the event date.
In order to register your interest, please email the team at engage@contacts.bham.ac.uk by April 13th to tell us why you want to be involved and what you will bring to the team (200 words max). No subject specific knowledge required, students from all Colleges welcome to apply.
[This Lapworth event is being supported with Alumni Impact Funding – thank you to our alumni and we hope to see you there on 19th July!]
BY THE WAY
Academics: In the coming weeks we will also be looking for researchers who would like to carry out public engagement activities at the Lapworth Lates event. If you would like to be involved let us know: engage@contacts.bham.ac.uk
University of Birmingham, together with STFC, Institute of Physics and SEPnet are proud to launch the evaluation report from Interact 2017. Interact 2017 was a symposium whose aim was to cultivate a community of engagement practitioners within the physical sciences who develop high quality STEM engagement and encourage a culture of strategic and reflective practice.
The symposium was a success with over 120 physical scientists from across the UK attending and sharing best practice. The symposium is also measuring its impact on these scientists through a yearlong evaluation process, the baseline of which can be found in the report.
In addition to this, the report showcases the rich landscape for Outreach and Public Engagement that currently exists in the physical sciences across the UK and sets good measures for its continued development.
The symposium also featured plenary speakers Prof Alice Roberts (University of Birmingham), and SEPnet’s Prof Jim Al Khalili (University of Surrey) talking about their careers as engaged researchers and science communicators.
30 parallel sessions were on offer at Interact 2017 and most of these were delivered by physicists. This shows how the Interact partnership is promoting best practice across physics departments in the UK.
If you missed the day and would like to get a feel for it, check out his video from the Institute of Physics which features SEPnet’s Director of Outreach and Public Engagement, Dr Dominic Galliano.
For more information, feel free to contact the UoB Interact team members: Dr Caroline Gillett & Professor Cristina Lazzeroni by dropping us an email: engage@contacts.bham.ac.uk
More and more people are using the internet to discover and share information about their health. In fact, more than 40% said information found via social media affects how they deal with their health.
58% of the UK adult population use social networking sites and more and more are using them for information and advice in all areas of their life – including their health. It is therefore vital that healthcare organisations find their place on social media.
Skills For Health have developed a new social media toolkit for healthcare which may be of interest to those of you working in a health related field.
Check it out here: skillsforhealth – socialtoolkit
Sense about Science have launched Public Engagement: a practical guide, funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). It is aimed at researchers to help and encourage them to involve the public in working out how to communicate findings — from the earliest stages of projects, and on the most challenging of subjects.
Sense about Science, have worked with researchers on many of the most sensitive subjects – some fraught with misunderstanding – to improve the communication of their research findings. They only undertake such partnerships where there are high stakes for the public and communication is difficult. Communicating the survival statistics of children’s heart surgery at different treatment centres in 2016 was among the toughest of these, with potentially major consequences for all involved.
The guide uses this experience as a case study throughout. Their public engagement team worked with NIHR-funded health researchers to present research information in a way that is shaped from the outset by people who will use it.
We hope you find the guide useful and if so please consider sharing it with your networks. You can also follow the conversation on Twitter via their hashtag #PublicLed
STFC Spark Awards 2017-B call is now open for applications until 4.00pm on Thursday 26th October.
The Spark Awards scheme aims to support high quality programmes of public engagement that inspire and involve audiences with stories of STFC science and technology. Grants of up to £15k are available.
Proposed engagement programmes must clearly focus around the remit of the STFC science programme (astronomy, solar and planetary science, particle physics, particle astrophysics, cosmology, nuclear physics and accelerator science) or clearly and demonstrably align to the science and technology work of STFC’s national and international laboratories and facilities.
Applicants should make clear how their application relates to the aims of the STFC Public Engagement Strategy
Applicants may choose which audiences to engage with and the methods of engagement. However, applications that propose engagement with audiences considered to have a low ‘science capital’ are encouraged. In addition, applications that highlight the social, ethical, and economic benefits of research are welcomed.
Before submitting your application you are encouraged to contact the STFC Public Engagement Team to discuss your ideas.
FURTHER INFO HERE
The UOBengage account has received a few inquiries today regarding an article published in the Birmingham Mail. Our Press Office have provided this response:
We publish the species and numbers of animals that are used for research at the University on our website.
We are involved in research to develop drugs and medical technologies that will help in the fight against life threatening and debilitating diseases and improve health care for patients, and indeed animals too. Some diseases and health problems involve processes that can only be studied in a living organism. For example, treatments for heart disease , diabetes, Alzheimer’s and certain types of cancer have all been developed by involving animals in testing and research.
A spokesperson for the University of Birmingham said: “We adhere to strict guidelines from the Home Office and are regulated by the Operational Guidance to the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, which requires that experimentation on animals should only occur when there is no alternative research technique. As part of that regulatory framework we have periodic visits from a Home Office inspector who checks the welfare of the animals used in research and the facilities that they are kept in. During these visits the inspector is looking for evidence of a caring culture, which ensures responsible behaviour and respect for the use and care of animals.
“All research that requires the use of animals is scrutinised by the Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Body to ensure that there are no possible alternatives to the use of animals and that studies are carried out to the highest standards of welfare and care, following the 3R’s principles of replacement, reduction and refinement. The 3Rs are a widely accepted ethical framework for conducting scientific experiments using animals humanely.”
In 2015, 47,657 animals were humanely euthanized. A significant number (around 70%) were part of a breeding programme and were not involved in experimental procedures.
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