University of Bristol

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Institutional Context

Summary

The University of Bristol (UoB) is a global university with a civic role. Focused on quality and equality, our vision is to sustain and improve upon our world-leading reputation for research, and embrace educational innovation that will nurture skilled, adaptable and resilient graduates.

As a research-intensive institution in one of Europe’s most creative and vibrant cities, our ambition is to be globally renowned for the quality of our teaching and the excellence and breadth of our research. We encourage and nurture strong partnerships that underpin teaching and research, and enable wide-ranging societal and economic impact.

Our HEBCIS return demonstrates our academics want to make the world a better place through impact, by working with partners and commercialisation of our knowledge.

Institutional context

UoB is passionate about global and local societal and economic impact, which comes from the highest-quality research.

Our Research Strategy 2017-23 is twofold:

to build on our position as one of the world’s leading research-intensive universities
to be exemplary in our approach to collaboration and a beacon of good practice in innovation and impact

UoB is key to a rapidly developing innovation ecosystem in Bristol, now 3^rd in the UK for investment in start-ups. UoB’s start-ups and spin outs create 100s of jobs, bringing talent to Bristol as well as hiring residents. Our new enterprise campus is about creating the Innovation District to ensure our positive role can be further developed.

In 2019, Bristol made two successful EoIs to the UKRI Strength in Places Fund, in cybersecurity and creative industries, both securing support from local government, and regional and international business. The creative industries bid, MyWorld, was successful and will create new jobs and production facilities.

Our holistic KE approach involves local academic champions for business, public sector and community engagement, training and mentoring for all career stages, and dedicated expertise for finding and supporting partners.

Within UoB, the pipeline of entrepreneurial talent flows from our student entrepreneurship and academics from 26 Schools in six Faculties, fueled by substantial research funding and talent. We obtain 47% of our research income through working with non-academic external partners (collaborative and contract research income [HEBCIS 2018/19] as a proportion of total research income [HEBCIS/HESA 2018/19]), more than many larger institutions, and are 3^rd in the Russell Group for the % of publications co-authored with industry (SciVal, 2015-19 average).

Impact Culture

At the heart of our approach are training and mentoring for all researchers and academics:

In 2018, Bristol Clear launched a virtual centre that offers coaching and peer support on engagement and impact for post-doctoral staff.
The Cultivating Research and Teaching Excellence (CREATE) programme is the University of Bristol's continuing professional development scheme for academics and has provided engagement and partnership training.
Bristol Doctoral College provides training for all PhD students that was identified by the QAA as an example of good practice at the University in 2016.
In 2020, Engagement and Impact became one of four required assessment areas for promotion, replacing the previous optional criteria. Candidates must demonstrate excellence in engagement with external organisations, the application of knowledge and/or community dialogue.

Impact structures

KE support at Bristol has both central and Faculty-level components. Faculties have liaison and public outreach units supporting business, public sector and community engagement. The central Research & Enterprise Division was recently organised into four Directorates with dedicated teams for areas of KE, based on a ‘value-chain’ shown below.

Bristol combines disciplinary excellence in our Schools and Specialist Research Institutes with five cross-disciplinary University Research Institutes. This research base and the cross-institutional KE support together develop and deliver strategic visions addressing society’s biggest questions. Their high level of external engagement with all sectors of society delivers a sustainable and translational research agenda with significant societal impact.

Local Growth and Regeneration

Summary of approach

Local growth and regeneration feature at the heart of our University strategy, and drive a rich, varied and ambitious set of local engagement and activities, supported by ongoing communication and evaluation. We have forged deep partnerships with industry, with knowledge intensive and third sector organisations, and with local government, both city and regional. So, whilst we have a global reach and impact, we have an equally strong sense of being of and for our city region. We find much common purpose with all our regional partners as we strive together to make the city and region a better and more prosperous place for all.

Aspect 1: Strategy

Our strategic approach is to improve society and the economy, globally and locally, through our civic role. High-quality research is being used in both contexts, whether it is through new medicines or shaping more equitable socio-digital futures. This civic role has recently been embedded more deeply in our mission, via a new third pillar of our institutional strategy: ‘Civic Engagement and Social Responsibility’. We actively foster long-term partnerships with key regional academic institutions (including via the GW4 and SETsquared consortia), industry, the third sector, and local government.

Our Vision and Strategy (2016) commits us to ‘work with regional industry, universities and local government to develop research and innovation themes…to drive world leaving innovation, economic growth and job creation’. Our Research Strategy 2017-2023 states we will: ‘be a leader of innovation and enterprise in the city and region… through the expansion of our internationally-acclaimed Engine Shed including the Bristol SETsquared Business Incubator, in the City’s Temple Quarter…” and commits to developing ‘a Bristol Digital Innovation Platform … the University’s flagship contribution to the regional research and innovation agenda’ (BDFI, below).

The University of Bristol (UoB), then, defines local as both the city of Bristol (the area covered by Bristol City Council (BCC), with whom we are extensively engaged) as well as the wider region, most directly the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) but also the emerging Western Gateway Powerhouse.

We identify local growth and regeneration needs through engagement with these partners including:

The Vice-Chancellor’s membership of the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) Board and our extensive engagement with the creation of the Local Industrial Strategy.
Senior representation on many civic fora, including those addressing equality, place and economic development.
Strong ‘key account’ partnerships with, for example BCC, Knowle West Media Centre, Airbus, and WECA and engagement with local industrial clusters in creative digital, aerospace, advanced manufacturing, fintech, cyber, telecoms, and microelectronics.
Relationship with Business West and the ‘Initiative’.
Through our Engine Shed (ES) and SETsquared Bristol Centre, as a city hub for business and civic interaction that puts the University at the heart of these interactions.

These engagements allowed us to co-develop (via GW4) the 2017 South West England and South East Wales Science and Innovation Audit for BEIS. The importance of the Digital Innovation and Advanced Engineering sectors was noted, including Aerospace, which required new skilled talent and innovation support. These areas were further refined in 2019, through a Local Industrial Strategy, including life sciences, creative, quantum technology and financial sectors.

The Innovation Audit led to a detailed assessment of the needs of our residents, gathered in partnership with BCC, which identified a requirement for digital skills, enterprise spaces and urban regeneration. The result was the co-planning of Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus/Innovation District for 2023.

Aspect 2: Activity

Approach and Activities

Following the extensive local partner engagement described above, our strategic focus for local activity has been on digital innovation, advanced manufacturing, aerospace, quantum and life sciences.

Highlights include:

SETsquared Bristol supported over 80 high-tech start-ups and scale-ups each year via the SETsquared hands-on business acceleration programme, including mentoring and investor events. The 500+ corporates that interact with SETsquared have provided investment alongside angel investors and venture capital firms.
The Engine Shed – a University-BCC partnership that drives growth and innovation for the South West region. By 2019 ES had worked with over 60 partners to deliver positive social and economic benefit including: Investor Briefings (>250 investors and proposals from >100 start-up companies); the Entrepreneurial Outreach Project (for refugee and migrant communities to access business support networks); science and entrepreneurship activities for pupils primarily from disadvantaged areas; the Bristol Technology Festival (42 events, 22 venues, >5000 attendees).
UoB has invested much effort in engaging with businesses and the local community to co-create the Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus (TQEC). Opening in 2023, TQEC will create a hub of ideas, research, innovation, and co-creation. Over ten-years TQEC will generate an estimated net additional gross value added for the West of England of £626M. It has served as a catalyst for a further potential £2 billion planned development (over the next 10 years), and the Temple Quarter Regeneration Area has the ambition to create 22,000 jobs and 10,000 homes.
UoB delivered extensive engagement to secure 27 business and community partners to provide £72M of partner investment to leverage £29M of capital from the UK Research Partnership Investment Fund (UK RPIF) for the Bristol Digital Futures Institute (BDFI) and UoB is investing around £80M in staff and infrastructure. The institute pioneers transformative approaches to digital innovation, developing systematic understanding of sociotechnical futures to drive the creation of digital technologies for inclusive, prosperous and sustainable societies.
UoB has been offering dedicated support for local engineering businesses (large and small) through our subsidiary, the National Composites Centre (NCC), part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult; initial investment (£25M) came from the European Regional Development Fund, the South West Regional Development Agency and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. NCC (opened in 2011) is a world-leading research and development facility, where innovators come to make things lighter, stronger, smarter and more sustainable. With access to ‘beyond’ state-of-the-art technology and the best composites engineering capabilities in the world, NCC helps its customers solve the most complex engineering problems. This in turn supports investment in the region (e.g. the £32M GKN Global Technology Centre).
The partnership with the WECA is crucial and thriving. UoB supported development of the West of England Local Industrial Strategy and a member of staff is seconded part-time to WECA. UoB is a member of the Research and Innovation group which will drive local innovation activity and raise the profile of the West of England to attract investment and is a member of the steering group supporting a network of Living Labs that address local and national challenges. UoB also partners with WECA on regional innovation bids.
In 2019 the Digital Engineering Technology & Innovation initiative brought together advanced engineering companies, digital technology pioneers and universities to push the boundaries of digital engineering. The consortium, including the NCC and UoB, is supported by £8.2M from WECA and businesses.
In 2017 UoB secured £35M from WECA (alongside £35m of UoB match funding) for a physical incubator for quantum technology, called the Quantum Technology Innovation Centre (QTIC+) which opened as a pilot in 2018 with the aim to position the UK as a world leader in the development and commercialisation of quantum and emergent technologies. Building on University research, QTIC+ provides specialist facilities and expertise for businesses to address key market failures and to develop technologies for next-generation quantum and deep-tech enhanced products.
Just prior to this, in 2016, the EPSRC funded the Quantum Technology Enterprise Centre (QTEC) – the pipeline for QTIC+, offering twelve-month salaried fellowships to postdoctoral researchers to explore and start-up companies.
Research England, under their University Enterprise Zone programme, awarded £1.5M – matched by £500k from UoB – to partner with life science incubator Unit DX to triple their floor space and expand services to early stage life science/deep-tech companies.
We also invested in the local creative digital ecosystem via the Pervasive Media Studio (PMS) partnership and the Bristol Virtual Reality Lab (BVRL). This network of people and knowledge assets helped UoB to win the recent Strength in Places award, ‘MyWorld’ (starting November 2020): a £46m, 5-year creative digital programme to build R&D facilities and partnerships connecting regional and national partners with global tech giants, including Netflix, Google, and Microsoft.
In response to the needs of SMEs, UoB has run numerous student-placement schemes, including placing PhDs (and Engineering Doctorates) into companies to allow them to benefit from new talent and innovation supported by an academic tutor. Since 2017/2018, for example, there have been 27 three-month placements, primarily with local partners; in summer 2020, it also supported entrepreneurship training locally for 37 doctoral students.

Meeting the region’s needs

We monitor the activities above in line with our strategy and undertake formative and summative evaluation.

Ongoing formative feedback is gathered by:

The LEP Board and WECA.
Structured engagement with BCC at all levels.
Local businesses feedback through surveys and interactions via our Engine Shed and Partnerships teams.

We also undertook a more formal survey with our partners in response to the COVID-19 crisis to ensure we continue to understand their needs and ways in which we can work together to build back better. Summative assessment is part of our funding obligations from WECA and Research England, for the creation of new jobs and GVA.

Support for these assessments – and generally for local growth and regeneration work – is largely based within the Research and Enterprise Division (RED), in particular in three teams:

1) Partnerships team manages key partnerships with, for example, Thales, BT, LV=, and civic organisations. The team’s holistic approach promotes collaboration and co-production with partners. The partnership with LV= exemplifies how this works.

2) Impact Development team (formerly the Knowledge Exchange team) picks up these and other relationships, supporting our academics and partners to plan for impact and access funding for projects (>75% supporting regional organisations).

3) Research Commercialisation team identify, protect, manage and commercialise opportunities that arise from our research, including licenses and the creation of researcher-led new companies. A new spin-out policy, combined with relationships with local angel networks, investors, entrepreneurs and incubators, has led to significant growth in start-ups and spin-offs. The success of deals such as the potential $800m Ziylo exit, whose founder co-created Unit DX, has helped Bristol to emerge as a life science hub.

Aspect 3: Results

The result of these strategically-driven activities is a University that is an integral part of the local innovation ecosystem and economy: from partnerships with local companies enabling them to compete internationally (e.g. Composites UTC with Rolls-Royce has generated >£18m since 2017) to commercialisation (below). Results are communicated online via University and social media channels, a range of targeted Newsletters as well as by extensive in-person (and latterly more virtual) two-way and multi-party engagement with our partners; thereby activities and results continue to drive further partnerships, innovation and engagements. Below are results in selected key areas.

Activity	Outcomes	Impact
Engine Shed/ SETsquared Bristol	Between 2016-2019 per annum: Turnover revenues >£40M Products to market >70 Investment/funding raised >£50M	New jobs per annum >200 World and European International awards Wider SETsquared partnership:
QTEC	28 new companies (including KETS, QLM, Nu Quantum, SeeQC); 64 new jobs; £40M equity, contract and grant funding.	Importance of quantum technology recognised in LIS. Highly skilled jobs created for the UK: 1/3 of UK’s funded quantum start-ups originated at QTEC. > 8x ROI.
Research commercialisat-ion and Unit DX	From 2016-2019 34 spin-off companies created; 14 University-linked companies were supported by Unit DX.	Active Bristol spin-off companies employ 600 people. Spin-offs have impacted diverse fields from domestic violence intervention to hygienic touchless interfaces critical in the COVID-19 pandemic. UoB spin-offs attracted £100M new equity funding into the region and nearly £300M in total.
NCC	The Technology Pull Through Programme sponsored projects to increase technology readiness levels totalling £1.4M (UoB projects =£990K).
Partnerships working (RED team and more widely)	Contract and collaborative research income have risen sharply, from £50M (14/15) to over £80M (18/19) (HEBCIS). Success in InnovateUK funding: excluding Catapults, since 2006/7 UoB is fourth in the UK (£80M).	Income represents collaborative research with partners of all kinds that benefits them and thus the local economy. One demonstration of the impact of partnership working is that it leads to REF impact case-studies, e.g. forthcoming ones with Renishaw, Rolls-Royce and Toshiba.
Pervasive Media Studio	Academic income £1.3M (2019/20) and support of many other bids (e.g. MyWorld).	Annual turnover, all PMS residents: £12.6M (2018/19) >50% increase since 2017/18. Employment (2018/19): 138 (ongoing employment); 429 (all teams).
BVRL	£600k projects with UoB.	Employment: 10 resident companies, many jobs created.

Other investments described in Aspect 2 (especially TQEC) will come to fruition in the next five years, further cementing the University’s pivotal role in local growth and the regeneration of our city region.

Public & Community Engagement

Summary of approach

Engagement with publics and communities is an integral part of the University’s activities and values. We have a long history of collaborative and co-produced research with civil society, together with a commitment to supporting engagement. Our Public Engagement team is one of the longest established in the UK, working alongside groups including our five University Research Institutes, which foreground engaged research. We were one of the first universities to create a holistic model for engagement with our Engaged University Strategy, which puts public and community engagement on an equal footing with other stakeholders. Our engagement culture is exemplified by our infrastructure plans, in particular our civic aspirations for our new campus at Temple Quarter in the heart of Bristol.

Aspect 1: Strategy

This document refers to public engagement as this is the terminology used within the University. However, our definition includes communities so it can be read interchangeably as public and community engagement.

Our strategy and approach to public engagement have evolved since our first vision in 2004, driving a culture of engagement within the University. The Engaged University Strategy gives a holistic view of how engagement beyond academia enriches our work, overseen by the Engaged University Steering Group (EUSG). Civic Engagement and Social Responsibility is a core pillar of the developing University Strategy 2025, reflecting our aspirations to become a global civic university and our commitment to a Civic University Agreement. The Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus (TQEC) will bring the University closer to areas in Bristol with relatively high levels of deprivation, and we are building partnerships and developing knowledge exchange with community stakeholders to meet local needs.

Our governance structures support these aims and ensure accountability through the involvement of stakeholders. University Court (Aspect 2) connects the wider community and the University, providing ideas, influence and support to our mission. Their decision in 2019 to focus on our aspirations as a global civic university has informed our initial civic engagement plans, which have been approved by University Executive Board and Senate. An extensive consultation is ensuring the voices of a breadth of stakeholders in our city region are included.

Responsibility for public engagement is embedded throughout the University. The Research and Enterprise Division (see Institutional Narrative) provides engagement support, especially through the Business and Civic Engagement (BCE) Directorate. The Public Engagement (PE) team provides leadership by owning engagement strategies, supporting governance structures and as an initial contact point for publics. The Partnerships Team builds and nurtures relationships with community, public, third and business sector organisations. Public engagement expertise also exists across the University, including TQEC’s engagement strand and within the University Research Institutes (URIs) that foreground engaged research. Engagement, including with publics and communities, is included in academic role profiles and senior academics are required to “actively involve themselves in promoting and embedding a culture of engagement beyond academia”.

Public engagement funding is secured from many external and internal sources (Aspect 2). In the past three years, the PE team have advised on £14m of awards with a major public engagement element, and embedded engagement training and best practice in our £60m Centres for Doctoral Training.

The University is an anchor institution in the response, resilience, and recovery of the city during the COVID-19 crisis. A Civic Response Group reports directly to the University COVID Planning Group, is a single point of contact for communities and partners seeking to work with us on current challenges, and coordinates the numerous ways staff and students are contributing to the city’s response. It has championed civic engagement and provided a springboard for further action, and has been such an effective cross-institution model that the group has evolved into the Global Civic University (GCU) Advisory Group, supporting more widely our approach to being a global civic university.

Self-assessment scoreDeveloping your strategy5

Aspect 2: Support

Operational support for public engagement includes dedicated staff with engagement expertise, engagement funding, training opportunities, staff recognition and reward. Public engagement also forms part of the Engagement and Impact promotion and progression criteria for academic staff.

The PE team is a hub for public engagement support, resources and practical guidance, providing bespoke advice and creating opportunities for peer-to-peer learning (Aspect 4). The University co-hosts the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) and develops best practice through national networks such as the Schools University Partnership Initiative (SUPI). The Partnerships team have developed a framework for building and maintaining external partnerships at all levels of formality and scale. Our partnerships with civil society and cultural organisations include the Black South West Network, Knowle West Media Centre, Bristol Museums, the SS Great Britain, We The Curious, and the Watershed. Faculty support, such as the Outreach team in Engineering and the Professional Liaison Network in Social Sciences, has increased and become embedded in recent years.

The range of engagement funding opportunities includes:

The EPSRC and ESRC Impact Acceleration Accounts provide over £1m/year to generate impact from research.
The PE Seed Fund (2017-19) enabled academics to carry out high quality engagement to change practice or culture.
The Temple Quarter Engagement Fund (2019-date) supports projects that meet our civic aspirations, with £40k per year from philanthropic donations.
The Brigstow Institute has sponsored over 70 engaged and co-produced research projects in the last five years.

The Institutional Narrative outlines our training infrastructure. Public engagement training is available at all career stages, supported with experiential learning opportunities such as the annual Research without Borders festival of postgraduate research.

We provide ways for publics and community groups to be involved in the University. University Court is a key part of our governance structure and provides advice, opinion and counsel to the Board of Trustees - 45 members (out of 100) are externally nominated, with 20 from civic, cultural and community organisations. External partners provide expertise through groups such as the Public Advisory Group for the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute, which provides a hub for multi-directional engagement about health research and priorities. Members of the public are welcomed through our accessible and porous campus, can find out about University events through our centrally coordinated events listing, and contact public-facing teams. Our community mailbox, established to hear about the circumstances our partners and communities are facing during COVID-19, is continuing with a focus on how we can work together to meet all the challenges we face going forward.

Self-assessment scoreSupport structures and recognition4

Aspect 3: Activity

Whilst individual researchers’ engagement activities are based on their work and the needs of their partners, the University approaches its major initiatives based on strategic need.

A key area is our role as an anchor institution and our contribution to Bristol’s One City Plan – the overarching strategy for the city. Our partnership with Bristol City Council (BCC) and the City Office has led to more than 20 live co-produced projects, including City Fellowships which provide six NGO and Council staff with the opportunity to co-produce research on decision-making in diverse communities. Another highlight is Everyday Integration, working with BCC and 29 community partners to identify best practice and overcome barriers to sharing spaces and moving around the city.

These partnerships have led to long-standing collaborations and reciprocal benefits. Bristol’s status as the first UK European Green Capital in 2015, in which the University played a major role, has created a legacy of sustainability. The University of Bristol and UWE Bristol were the first UK HEIs to commit to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Accord launched in 2017. We have embraced the SDGs in our strategic approach, which has fed into both our civic aspirations and their embedding in the One City Plan. In 2019 we became the first UK university to declare a climate emergency, joining our support for this agenda with BCC and community partners.

Another area of collaboration has been in the city’s cultural activities. We are major partners in city-led public activities such as the Bristol Festival of Ideas, which has over 100 events in its year-round programme, and the Festival of Nature, the UK’s largest free celebration of the natural world. This is complemented by the University’s public programmes such as the Temple Quarter Arts Programme, Bristol Neuroscience Festival and Thinking Futures. European Researchers’ Night, which first came to Bristol in 2014-15, returned in 2018-19 and 2020 following successful funding bids. These activities enrich the city’s cultural offering, build external partnerships that lead to future research, and provide opportunities for experiential learning in engagement for researchers at all levels.

Collaboratively tackling our communities’ challenges has led to successful projects such as Know Your Bristol and Productive Margins as well as one of only two Leadership Fellowships from the UKRI Connected Communities programme. As a city with huge geographical disparity in educational outcomes, we have built on the SUPI project to maintain relationships with schools and multi-academy trusts, working with teachers to link our research to the curriculum and support their professional development. Our membership of Bristol Health Partners, and the multiple Health Integration Teams that embed community engagement in their work, helps address health disparities.

Conducting engagement within responsible research and innovation (RRI) is another driver and the University has established both academic and practitioner expertise in this area through a number of European Commission-funded projects, including SYNENERGENE (exploring the ethical implications of synthetic biology), PERFORM (using performance to inform educational methods around ethics) and Re-Cognition (looking at the impacts of zero-carbon buildings).

Self-assessment scoreDelivering your strategy5

Aspect 4: Results and learning

Evaluation is critical to our engagement; as well as measuring outputs and impacts, we see evaluation as a way of learning from and reflecting on our practice. Rather than applying a single approach, evaluation is tailored to activities and their outcomes. Several professionals across the University, including the PE Evaluation Officer, advise and support evaluation planning for activities. Major engagement activities and programmes are all evaluated, with a focus not only on the participants but also on the experiences of the researchers involved. For example, the evaluation of Invincible showed that collaboration with artists gave deeper understanding of the implications of synthetic biology to both researchers and publics. We enable peer-to-peer learning through the Engagement Bites lunchtime talks, the Conversations that Count showcase in 2018, and through guides including the ethics and practicalities of collaborative research.

Evaluating the role of public engagement in REF2014, we collaborated with the NCCPE to develop a briefing paper for the next REF, based on analysis of the impact case studies. Within the University, we found that the level of public engagement in our case studies was consistent with the national average. Areas of success were shared internally to improve future engagement work and outcomes.

Since 2019, the PE team have systematically logged internal and external interactions. This is analysed bi-annually to inform the team’s workplan and KPIs, which ultimately feed into divisional plans. URIs are engaged in a constant process of reflection and evaluation through their steering and governance boards. Internally, this evaluation enables us to identify gaps, track strategic priorities and determine where best to use resources. Externally, it enables us to analyse engagement by sector of society, nationally and internationally. Locally, we use evaluation to determine our engagement geographically and to tailor our interactions to ensure that we reach underserved communities.

Self-assessment scoreEvidencing success3

Aspect 5: Acting on results

The University has used feedback from our internal and external communities, along with evaluative methods, to develop our strategic approach to engagement. EUSG has enabled recommendations such as the inclusion of engagement in role profiles and promotion criteria (implemented in 2016), and dialogue with senior management on the holistic model of engagement and our role as a civic university. The University commissioned an external evaluation of EUSG, including consultation with a wide range of staff with oversight and experience of engagement. One of the main recommendations – embedding engagement as a major strand in the next University Strategy – has been enacted through the Civic Engagement and Social Responsibility pillar. A second recommendation around governance structures is addressed as part of the new strategy development.

During this transition, mechanisms for reporting on engagement and feedback have remained, primarily through the GCU Planning and Delivery Group. University Court’s role in providing an external viewpoint (Aspect 1) has directly informed how we consider our civic aspirations and how we communicate and collaborate with external partners. Court is currently considering its focus for 2021; the two proposals relate to our civic response to COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement – both areas of importance to the city and the University.

As part of our role in the city’s recovery from COVID-19, the University is conducting a research project on challenges partners have faced and how we might work with them. The project involves deep-dive and open qualitative interviews with partners from a range of sectors, coordinated by leading social science academics. The conclusions will be rigorous and rich in insight, informing our civic response in the coming months and years.

Self-assessment scoreCommunicating and acting on the results3