The Creating Knowledge update from the May 2018 Leadership Bulletin
Professor Roger Eccleston
I don’t usually watch breakfast television, but on 18 April I made an exception to watch C3RI’s Ivan Phelan discussing his work, with colleagues, on the use of VR to help ease pain for burn victims. I tend to watch the 10 o’clock news more frequently and the following day was surprised and delighted to see Sunita Toor discussing her work tackling violence against women in India. This was quite an intense couple of days for media coverage but quite characteristic of my first few months as PVC Research, during which I have become aware of remarkable and impactful research and knowledge exchange in all four faculties that I had previously known little or nothing about.
The Creating Knowledge Conference on 18 June will provide an opportunity for us to share and discuss the excellent research and KE activity that goes on across the University. The sessions will be organised into the emerging research and impact platforms, which are:
- Healthy, Independent Lives
- Thriving, Inclusive Communities
- Future Economies
The platforms are a mechanism to galvanise research collaborations across the University, enhance the external profile of our research and KE, and act as beacons for external collaboration to support our plans to grow research income. They are aligned to the grand challenges; the complex, global problems that can only be addressed through innovative approaches linking disciplines. It is important to stress that these are areas of application and impact and are deliberately not aligned to disciplines because they should stimulate inter-disciplinary working. I know that in some cases it is easy for colleagues to see the alignment between their research and one or more platforms: in others it is more challenging to the extent that some colleagues feel excluded from them. In response to the latter, I have yet to come across any research or KE activity in the University that does not have a potential positive impact on people’s lives or communities and/or an economic benefit.
The platforms are intended to provide an opportunity to link complementary research areas across the University to grow capacity and enhance impact. The Creating Knowledge Conference will provide an opportunity to shape the research and impact platforms and to define a series of 3 key challenges/questions to be addressed by each platform through the next year. Please register here by 1 June and submit abstracts here by 25 May.
