A summary of each project that was awarded funding is provided below:
SHU Food Teach Meet was formed to create a school food teacher network in the Sheffield region. The aim of the network is to forge links and a route for targeted research in secondary school food departments, as well as promoting Sheffield Hallam as a destination for students. Despite the erosion of school food departments, secondary food teachers remain an important route into schools. It is this diminishing resource that was the focus of previous research on the food safety awareness of pupils. Since the introduction of a new GCSE curriculum, a review of this research is timely, along with an investigation into the career pathways of students into higher education food courses. Previous research has proved that access to schools, teachers and pupils is challenging and it was only successful through the generation of foodbugclub.net and school teacher contact/school visits. For this reason, school teachers from schools local to Sheffield will be targeted to develop a network and links with Sheffield Hallam to target research later in the year.
SHARE (Sheffield Hallam Appetite REsearch cluster) is a newly formed, CKIP-funded cluster of around 30 academics from a diverse range of disciplines across 3 faculties. Individually and collaboratively we undertake research in appetite regulation, eating behaviour, appetite modulation, obesity and weight management (and associated areas). Our Connecting with Professional Practice funding has been awarded to facilitate engagement with a range of food manufacturers and retail partners to explore how industry-funded research facilitated and delivered by SHU could help speed products with potential to satiate appetite to market.
Ageing Research Network: The aim of the Ageing Research Network is to generate and share research knowledge related to the health and wellbeing outcomes of older adults, recognising the interprofessional contribution of service providers and academic practitioners with older adults; community groups and neighbourhood networks. Research has the potential to drive organisational improvement using scholarship as a tool for learning, decision-making and integration of care and this network will be a vehicle for making links across the sector to engage and support professional practitioners who are already active or who wish to engage in further research associated with ageing, older adult services and or evaluation of existing provision.
New and prospective fathers consultation event: During this year’s CPP conference we were offered the opportunity to apply for a £500 grant to facilitate a research project with practice partners. The project lead’s research interests are related to the transition to fatherhood and paternal perinatal mental health. The lead has close links with practice partners and experts by experience across the country and thought this would be an opportunity to bring interested parties together to discuss a future research project or strategy in this area. Subsequently, NIHR have release a call for research bids related to perinatal mental health and they have begun gathering expressions of interest from my network to co-produce a bid for this call. The Seedcorn funding will facilitate this in funding a meeting/ workshop.
Alumni 2020: The Alumni 2020 project is a one day conference event which attempts to strengthen and build relationships between our growing tourism alumni and our current students. The conference will include networking opportunities for alumni and students, talks from alumni working in the tourism industry, and workshops facilitated by careers connect team. The event builds on the success of our smaller alumni events where only final year students and a handful of graduates attend. Funding for this project has allowed us to ambitiously invite all our Tourism alumni from the past 20 years, and provide meaningful networking opportunities for the current cohort and our graduates. The event will be marketed to our alumni as a chance to ‘re-connect’ with Sheffield Hallam, their peers and as an anchor point to move their careers forward. For students, this will be a great opportunity to learn from others about life after Sheffield Hallam and to seriously consider their career once they have left. The event will also provide a unique research opportunity to allow us to explore the value of networking with graduates, the relationship between networking skills and employability, and the value of networking opportunities in higher education.
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The team is looking forward to working with the project leads at a series of workshops which will be held throughout the year, to provide support, share best practice and develop cross-University networks.
For more information about:
– the Conference;
– the associated seedcorn funding stream;
– the Professional Practice Foundation; and/or
– the Hallam Pracademia Community of Practice
please contact either Jill Dickinson (jill.dickinson@shu.ac.uk), Teri-Lisa Griffiths (teri-lisa.griffiths@shu.ac.uk – Department of Law and Criminology) or Mike Coldwell (m.r.coldwell@shu.ac.uk – Centre for Development and Research in Education).
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