| Year | Awardee | Department | Grant amount | Project |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
2023 |
Ben Bowers | Public Health and Primary Care | £1989 | Understanding members of Muslim communities’ perspectives of last-days-of-life symptom control: co-designing a qualitative study with community members |
| The project will work in partnership with members of Muslim communities in Luton and Leicester, predominantly people from Bangladeshi, Somali and Pakistani descent. Through two in-person public engagement workshops, we will co-design a future qualitative research study to explore and understand members of Muslim communities’ perspectives of last-days-of-life symptom control, including the use of medications such as opioids and sedatives. People can be concerned that these symptom control medications may impede communication or hasten death. Our joint discussions will shape the way this research can meaningfully benefit these communities and enable long-term collaborations to be built. | ||||
|
2023 |
Stephen Burgess | Public Health and Primary Care | £1375 | Causal Language: Attitudes, Interventions, and Management (CLAIM) |
| CLAIM (Causal Language: Attitudes, Interventions, and Management) is a project that aims to start a conversation about how we communicate evidence on risk factors for disease. Causal language is a necessary feature of healthcare research reporting. Language such as ‘X lowers risk of Y’, ‘X reduces risk of Y’ and ‘X is linked with Y’ is often used to communicate the relationship between certain factors and disease risk. Such language needs to be chosen carefully to distinguish between findings that reflect causal relationships versus those that reflect correlative relationships. Our project will engage patients with chronic or long-term health conditions, as well as their carers, who are likely to be particularly sensitive to causal language in how they navigate their everyday lives. By using questionnaires and discussion groups, we want to gain an informed understanding – shaped by discussion – of how they interpret causal and non-causal language in the context of managing ongoing diseases. | ||||
|
2023 |
Yanaina Chavez-Ugalde | MRC Epidemiology Unit | £1680.4 | Incorporating the experts’ experience: Co-developing research with adolescents to explore ultra-processed food consumption |
| Two thirds of the calories consumed by adolescents comes from ultra-processed food, the highest compared to other age groups. Ultra-processed food is associated with many non-communicable diseases. Adolescents’ food choices are strongly driven by their food environments, peer influence and social norms. Food habits created during adolescence impact health throughout the life course, meaning teenagers are an important age group to engage and collaborate with. Qualitative research on the behavioural mechanisms and how adolescents conceptualise and value ultra-processed food is scarce but is needed to help inform policy. The aim of this project is: 1) engage youth in research about youth, their needs, experiences, and views on ultra-processed food; 2) inform and co-develop a larger qualitative study; 3) engage with a youth advocacy organisation and collaborate to design position and communication statements on ultra-processed food. We will recruit twelve 16- to 18-year-old members to co-develop a qualitative study. Incorporating adolescents’ views and experiences will enhance the relevance, quality and impact of the proceeding qualitative study. Through this project we will provide an engaging opportunity for youth to voice their experience and views on ultra-processed food whilst meaningfully contributing to research design. This will enhance research feasibility, relevance, quality, and impact. | ||||
|
2023 |
Mollie Etheridge | Education | £1684.98 | Childcare in Cambridge: What's happening and what can we do? |
| This public engagement project will invite parents, caregivers and campaigners to discuss the state of childcare in Cambridge. While rapid housing and ‘silicon fen’ developments have increased competition for childcare places in the city, the high cost-of-living means Cambridge is unaffordable to many care-staff, amounting to high staff turnover and disrupted continuity of care. Incoming changes to childcare funding structures may worsen this looming crisis of care. Although the promise of enhanced financial support for parents from September 2024 relieves the exclusionary cost of care, this support may further intensify the demand for nursery places. Concerns have also been raised that government subsidies will exacerbate financial pressures for providers. In a city that houses leading technology and scientific organisations, a lack of secure childcare provision may prevent parents and mothers especially from contributing to this innovative workforce. A looming crisis in childcare is therefore a looming and multifaceted crisis in gender equality. To raise awareness of these issues while celebrating the hard work of care-staff, the public forum will include a panel of speakers and showcase children’s artworks, as solicited from participating nurseries. | ||||
|
2023 |
Nicholas Evans | Clinical Neuroscience | £1,794 | The Anglian Stroke Partnership for Increasing Research Engagement (ASPIRE) Programme |
| Many of us have experienced the effects from stroke – either through personal experience, or the effect on a family member or friend – yet what the condition involves, how we prevent or treat it, and the role of research into the condition is often less familiar to people. Often stroke survivors, families, and carers want to know more about the condition and what opportunities there are to get involved with and influence research, but frequently such opportunities are limited for those living far away from large university teaching hospitals. The ASPIRE Programme will serve as an accessible resource for the public to learn more about stroke, but also play a vital role in shaping our research activities across the region to ensure that it is relevant to stroke survivors’ lived experiences. In particular, we want to promote a voice in shaping research and its application for those whom stroke often hits the hardest, but are frequently overlooked when planning and delivering stroke research. | ||||
|
2023 |
Marta Ferraresso | Arts and Humanities/Pathology | £2073 | Cancer awareness in rural community in Uganda |
| Childhood cancer in Uganda has a very low survival rate compared to the Western World. One of the biggest challenges for Ugandan doctors, is the advanced stage of cancer that the child presents once he/she arrives at the hospital. This is due to a lack of information and/or misinformation provided by their local doctors. This results in difficulties in treating the disease. Cancer awareness is fundamental to recognise and treat cancer in a time-sensible manner. My project will be done in collaboration with the Uganda Child Cancer Foundation, an NGO that helps children with cancer at the Uganda Cancer Institute. Together with them, we will go to six different schools in Fort Portal (Western Uganda) and in Gulu (Northern Uganda) and we will run workshops, games and activities with children and their parents. We will distribute booklets to explain the early signs of cancers and in each schools, we will appoint children ambassadors that will be the promoters of the fight against cancer. We will also have the opportunity to talk on a nation-wide radio station which will help us reaching a broader audience. | ||||
|
2023 |
Nat Jobbins | Social Anthropology | £2,000 | We have never been silent: neurodivergent and disabled voices on peace and conflict in Belfast |
| What does it mean to be a person with diagnosed “communication impairments” living in a city in the long aftermath of conflict, where what it means to communicate well are live questions for everyone? Centring this question through long-term fieldwork from the position of an autistic researcher of neurodivergence, this project will make a collaborative sound archive of neurodivergent and disabled voices, storying erased and ephemeral histories of growing up disabled among the working class, segregated interfaces of west Belfast—a city shaped daily by the remnants of the conflict euphemistically referred to as “the Troubles”. The silences that follow mass violence are often imagined to impact everyone in the same way, but the communication diversity that neurodivergent people embody draws attention to a more complex picture of who gets to break silences, where, and when. Through walking and talking on the streets where neurodivergent people live, recordings of “soundwalks” will narratively and spatially map both the sensory and social experiences of navigating a city where material traces of the Troubles shape social life. The archive will be exhibited publicly in collaboration with its contributors, recentring disabled voices in a history often quick to marginalise them. | ||||
|
2023 |
Nicholas Frayne | Arts and Humanities | £1,978.50 | Between Violence and Healing: collaborative architectural research and design towards negotiated social justice |
| Today, the memorialisation of sites of violence through preservation and design interventions has become a commonly accepted recommendation of truth commissions globally. Yet despite the architectural nature of many sites of violence, links between justice and architecture - as both an object of study and a practice of designing - remain a frontier for contemporary research. While engagement in public discourse on memorialisation has been theorised as key to formal and informal negotiations of justice, collaborative architectural design has not been adequately explored as a mode for engagement in such negotiations, nor as an opportunity for architectural knowledge-production about them. ‘Between Violence and Healing’ will enhance youth, civil society, and government engagement in legacies of political violence in Kenya through both a collaborative architectural design workshop and a digital archive. Organised around co-designing a memorial for the derelict former torture chambers in Nyayo House, Nairobi, the workshop will explore novel ways of engaging participants with memory work through architecture, and will feed into the interactive digital archive. This archive will house the resulting collaborative design ideas alongside new architectural documentation of the torture chambers, contributing to long-term preservation efforts while improving site accessibility and enhancing public awareness of past injustices. | ||||
|
2023 |
Lundi-Anne Omam Ngo Bibaa | Public health and primary Care | £1,980.26 | Advocacy workshops for ministry of health and humanitarian program managers in Cameroon |
| The project will engage 16 mid-senior level humanitarian and Ministry of Health experts on the use of a decision-making toolkit. This project aims to advocate for the use of this toolkit by demonstrating and explaining its usability and feasibility as a decision-making tool for humanitarian organisations. This will be an opportunity for the humanitarian professionals to get acquainted with the toolkit and sensitise their colleagues to make use of it within their organisations. This will be a one-day advocacy workshop and will be an opportunity to further disseminate my research findings which led to the development of the toolkit. | ||||
|
2023 |
Stanley Onyemechalu | Archaeology | £1,995 | Legacies of Biafra Heritage Project (LBHP) |
| The Legacies of Biafra Heritage Project will organize a two-day public engagement activity in Enugu, south-eastern Nigeria. This project will be implemented in collaboration with Centre for Memories – a youth-led cultural centre focused on preserving the memory of the Nigeria-Biafra war – to promote community collaboration and project sustainability. This LBHP will engage young people in an artistic representation of their knowledge of the Biafra war and its legacies and showcase same in a public exhibition. The public exhibition segment will feature an interactive session between war veterans, survivors (and their descendants) with the young people and their works. Bringing these stakeholders and diverse age groups together through artistic representation (drawing/painting, poetry, and short essays) will foster intergenerational dialogue and empower participants to exchange and express their knowledge/memory of the Biafra war and its legacies – a sensitive part of their collective history that has been suppressed by successive Nigerian governments. In addition to promoting historical awareness and research-based policy actions for post-conflict interventions, the LBHP will also promote community-researcher collaborations and relationships for project sustainability. | ||||
|
2023 |
Lily Rubino | Geography | £2000 | “It will follow me wherever I go”: Community impacts of toxic water contamination in the City of Newburgh, New York |
| This project will organize a series of workshops to communicate preliminary findings from research investigating the impact of toxic chemicals found in the drinking water of an economically and racially diverse city in upstate New York, USA. Findings will include an exploration of the social, emotional, and physical impacts of contamination, exposing the conditions that facilitated contamination, and asking why these conditions persist, especially for marginalized communities. They will also include an exploration of residents’ proposed community-oriented approaches to remediation. The workshops are intended to share these findings while actively seeking feedback on what is presented, ensuring the research and its conclusions are responsive to, and reflective of, the community who produced it. Community members will be able to engage with findings through interactive arts-based installations, performances, and presentations held at a local public library. Workshop design will prioritize accessibility and inclusivity, especially for marginalized and vulnerable groups. Feedback from the workshops will be incorporated into the research and made publicly available. | ||||
|
2023 |
Emily Rushton | Faculty of Education | £2000 | Acting Up: Putting Spirit, Strength and Support in the Spotlight |
| This project will establish a free, community drama club catering to mainstream school students with special educational needs, focusing on socio-emotional mental health. The club will take the form of a series of drama workshops that will culminate in the students putting on a performance of a show they have developed in a co-participatory nature. This will involve the lived experience of the students and families of the participants to create a piece of elevated verbatim theatre. These workshops will then be developed into an open-access, skeleton scheme of work and resources so that local schools are able to follow the same blueprint and utilise the resources as part of their SEND support and PSHE programmes. | ||||
|
2023 |
Lucy Rycroft-Smith and Frances Watson | Faculty of Education | £1950 | Espresso: Coffee Pod |
| Since 2016, the Cambridge Mathematics team have published 47 two-page mathematics education research summaries as free-to download pdfs on their website. Espressos are designed to make research accessible to teachers and other decision-makers with a variety of ‘ways in’ – infographics, quotes, summary boxes – and the references are fully hyperlinked so readers can click through to sources. This project takes an already existing, successful product (Espressos) and, through an iterative design process, creates audio versions which will support alternative access to these products for a wider range of users. We are recording the different textual sections and interpreting the infographic element of Espressos into the spoken word, by consulting with experts and trialling and testing with teachers. This is underpinned by the universal design principle: that designing for particular needs supports everyone: if you aren’t able to (or prefer not to) read or print an Espresso, you can still listen to one. It is also our intention that recording audio versions of research summaries supports a more friendly, discursive and engaging approach, humanising research for teachers. | ||||
|
2023 |
Sanjay Sinha and John Louca | Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research | £2000 | MED-KIT: Making use of Ex-situ Donated hearts for Knowledge and Innovation of Therapeutics |
| This project involved a series of workshops held across the country involving family members of organ donors, previous transplant recipients and patients with heart failure. The aim of this project was to understand the public's views on the use of turned down donor organs and explanted recipient organs from transplantation for use in research. This work has informed our group and our collaborators on how to most appropriately go about having these discussions with patients and family members of organ donors. Moreover, it has demonstrated that there is widespread support from vested groups for more widespread use of these organs in research. Going forward this work will enable our group to more confidently use these organs and has created several new collaborations with members of the public and other interested groups. We plan on continuing our public engagement work further. | ||||
|
2022 |
Benson Chen | Clinical Neuroscience | £2000 | 'The LHON and Short of It' |
| 'The LHON and Short of It' is a new podcast series focused on Leber hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON), a form of inherited mitochondrial blindness due to degeneration of the optic nerve, the electrical cable that connects the eyeball and the brain. The podcast explores the experiences of affected individuals living in the UK , decodes the jargon behind mitochondrial diseases, and explores the research that is being conducted in Cambridge to better understand and treat the condition. 'The LHON and Short of It' is written and hosted by Dr Benson Chen, a clinician-scientist in the Cambridge Clinical Mitochondrial Research Group (mitoCAMB), and co-hosted by James Ferguson from the UK LHON Society and Chloe Seikus, Assistant Psychologist. | ||||
|
2022 |
Fiona Costello | Faculty of Law | £1950 | The House, The Street, The Town. Everyday lives of EU migrant workers in the East of England. |
| This engagement project uses ethnographic photography to understand and record the everyday lives of culturally and linguistically diverse communities living in the coastal town of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. The project will produce an exhibition of community member portraits and local sights, which will be showcased in the local gallery 'PrimeYarc' in late 2023. The project is co-developed and delivered with local charity GYROS, a 'by and for' migrant support and advice charity who support and empower culturally diverse communities, and whose work allows people to develop skills, make friends and overcome barriers to integration. The project is delivered in a multilingual format, particularly engaging with participants who have limited/no English language skills. | ||||
|
2022 |
Kingsley Daraojimba | McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research | £1955 | Archaeology and the public at Igbo-Ukwu, Eastern Nigeria |
| The archaeological public engagement project at Igbo-Ukwu is targeted at secondary school students, their teachers, and non-academic members of the community, including property owners of previous excavation sites, youth representatives, women’s groups, and community leaders and chiefs. The project seeks to foster an inclusive collaboration between the community and researchers to address issues of mistrust, and the limited public awareness and attention given to the renowned Igbo-Ukwu archaeological sites. A two-day exhibition and workshop at the Igbo-Ukwu Museum is planned to enhance the analytical and comprehension skills of museum visitors through the development of interactive displays. A hands-on workshop in traditional pottery-making for students aims to instill a sense of pride and appreciation for the technical expertise of their ancestors, thereby fostering creative thinking for future innovations. The community will also have the opportunity to engage with the research team and provide feedback. Ultimately, this project is expected to increase public awareness and appreciation of the significance of the Igbo-Ukwu sites. | ||||
|
2022 |
Juliet Harrison-Egan | Architecture | £1700 | Spaces of Education: The Role of Schools in Post-Apartheid Cape Town |
| The School-Spaces Workshop is an interactive exchange about school design which will be held in Cape Town, South Africa in September 2023. The workshop aims to enable co-production of knowledge through dialogue between architects, school communities and researchers to make visible the design intentions and lived reality of state-subsidised schools in Cape Town. The workshop will share visual materials of case study schools through wall- and table-based displays. Participants will be invited to discuss, write and draw on these through facilitated activities which are designed to encourage collaborative engagement with the research. The workshop forms part of Juliet Harrison-Egan’s PhD research on the architecture of schools in the post-apartheid city. | ||||
|
2022 |
Joe Hutton | Pathology | £760 | Stiff swollen sore: your joints and arthritis |
| The “Stiff swollen sore: your joints and arthritis” project is a series of specialised interactive events as part of the Cambridge Festival and for the friends / families of patients with inflammatory arthritis that aims to demonstrate the role of key immune system cells in and the lived experience of inflammatory arthritis. | ||||
|
2022 |
Afifa Khan | McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research | £900 | MAHSA Project: Our History in Maps |
| Map Stories: The MAHSA project organised a free and family friendly event at Peterborough Museum. This event was focused on the stories behind historic maps of South Asia. This includes stories of the heritage depicted on the maps as well as the stories of the surveyors who created them. We wanted to not only raise awareness of the heritage of this region but encourage the local community, especially the South Asian community, to talk about their own stories and heritage. There were map displays for people to interact with and find archaeology for themselves, map making for kids and storytelling sessions. This event was organised as part of South Asia Heritage Month and also the Festival of Archaeology. | ||||
|
2022 |
Hannah Marshall | Criminology | £1980 |
Child Criminal Exploitation: Listening To Young People's Voices |
| Hannah will work collaboratively with the educator and musician Kenny Baraka, to support young people under Youth Offending Service supervision to write and record rap and spoken word tracks that explore their experiences of living and growing up in Cambridgeshire. In addition to providing a much-needed opportunity for young people to express their views, the aim is for some of the finished pieces to provide a learning resource for youth offending service staff and other young people. | ||||
|
2022 |
Paulina Perez Duarte Mendiola | Faculty of Education | £2000 |
Play in Hospital Awareness Week in Mexico (Semana del Juego Intrahospitalario en Mexico//Semana JIM) |
| Semana JIM® (Play in Hospital Awareness Week in Mexico) is a virtual space for students and child healthcare professionals who want to: (1) learn how to provide child-friendly medical care, in order to improve their paediatric clinical practice; (2) inspire other healthcare professionals and younger generations to acquire a ‘Pro-Play’ mindset; and (3) meet more child-healthcare professionals interested in this innovative area of knowledge and discover new professional opportunities. | ||||
|
2022 |
Rebecca Roberts | MacDonald Institute for Archaeological Research | £2000 |
Kazakhstan's heritage for children: sharing resources for engagement in museums. |
| In 2021, the Fitzwilliam Museum opened the 'Gold of the Great Steppe' exhibition, showing Iron Age gold and other artefacts from East Kazakhstan. During this time, the Fitzwilliam learning team and curator Rebecca Roberts worked together to create activities and trails for children in the galleries relating to this rich and varied heritage. This project will take these materials and work together with museums in Kazakhstan to share educational practices, learning through a collaborative workshop of sharing existing children's materials and collaborating on new ideas for engaging children with Kazakhstan's heritage in both the UK and Kazakhstan. The project will produce re-worked materials from the Gold of the Great Steppe exhibition that will be translated into Kazakh and made available online and in printed format, and will lay the ground for the further co-creation of resources in future. | ||||
|
2022 |
Ellen Taylor-Bower | Experimental Psychology | £2000 | Sensory overloads, meltdowns, and shutdowns in Autism: A combined quantitative and qualitative perspective |
| Promoting respectful and participatory research practices, this project involves working with a Research Advisory Group to collaboratively design and implement a wider research programme exploring lived experiences of sensory overloads, meltdowns, and shutdowns in autism. Led by an autistic researcher, this project engages with community needs and autistic voices from the earliest stages of research by establishing and collaborating with a dedicated Research Advisory Group of autistic adults. Through a series of workshops, discussion groups, and reflective activities, this group will meaningfully shape the approaches, methods, implementation, and outputs of the wider research project. This collaborative public engagement project will enhance the quality of the resulting research programme, while also ensuring the research reflects and respects community needs, and is able to have a meaningful, real-world, positive impact on the lives of autistic individuals. | ||||
|
2022 |
Abel Wilson Walekhwa | Veterinary Medicine | £1983.70 |
Stakeholder's Uptake of Early warning surveillance system for Rift Valley fever disease in Isingiro District, Uganda |
| Rift valley fever disease (RVF) is an emerging arboviral disease responsible for huge economic losses in affected communities and a significant risk of mortality in both livestock and humans mostly in Sub Saharan Africa. Abel Wilson Walekhwa received funding from Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) to pilot early warning surveillance system for RVF through community level reporting of livestock abortions. Through Public Engagement Fund, Abel has been able to; (1) profile these field activities which lead to development of audio-visual clips for stakeholder engagements, (2) organize a local radio talk show sensitizing people about RVF and (3) facilitate the technical and political leaders of Isingiro District Local Government to conduct community level sensitizations through community gatherings like burial ceremonies, barazas will increase the number of the alerts from the community level. | ||||
|
2021 |
Professor Neil Arnold | Scott Polar Research Institute | £1500 | Analysing the Arctic: a Digital Interactive |
| The Analysing the Arctic: a Digital Interactive takes a technology used by researchers to understand the changing Arctic, and makes it accessible to members of the public. Loaded onto tablet computers, the interactive will be trialled with visitors to the Polar Museum who will use satellite images to identify the size and location of meltwater lakes on the Greenland ice sheet. While using the software, they will learn about the impacts of climate change on the Arctic. The digital interactive feeds data back to a database, and each user will enhance our knowledge about the behaviour of meltwater lakes in Greenland. | ||||
| 2021 |
Dr Stefanie Buckner |
Department of Psychiatry | £1492.65 | Rehousing older social housing tenants: a research project, and what we learned from it |
| Appropriate housing is fundamental to health and wellbeing. Rehousing programmes are an important means to support older adults to move to more suitable homes. Stefanie and her colleagues created a short film describing research in Hackney/London into how well rehousing programmes for older social housing tenants are working. The film presents the methods used by the researchers, including a photography project capturing older tenants’ rehousing experiences, and it highlights what the research has found. It features older tenants and housing professionals who participated in the study discussing where rehousing programmes are working well, and where improvements are needed. | ||||
| 2021 |
Dr Lorna Dillon |
Department of Politics and International Studies | £1432 | Art, Politics, Feminism: Textile Narratives |
| Lorna will work with Naomi Polonsky to run events exploring the socio-political uses of textile art. The events will link to an exhibition that brings textile art from community needlework projects in Colombia and Chile into dialogue with textile art by UK and US based artists. We will have public talks on Chilean arpilleras and workshops for schools that share knowledge the children wouldn’t normally have access to. We will use art to start dialogues about restorative justice, human rights issues, gender politics, racial discrimination, and migration politics, challenging the art / craft dichotomy and structural biases in art history. | ||||
| 2021 |
Professor Andrea Foreman |
Gurdon Institute | £1500 | The Great BioQuest |
| The Great BioQuest is an interactive trail across Cambridge where participants are invited to complete one of three routes exploring developmental biology using a web app designed for smartphones. Each route (the worm, fly and frog) begins at the 1-cell stage and by answering a series of riddles at scientifically historic locations, participants aim to reach the adult stage at the last point in the trail. The project will also include a live event at the Cambridge Science Festival following an adapted route with active researchers stationed around the city, providing the opportunity for participants to speak to researchers in an informal setting. | ||||
| 2021 |
Dr Tiffany Harte |
Department of Physics, Cavendish Laboratory | £650 | Atoms All Around Me |
| Atoms All Around Me is an interactive creative workshop for children aged 7-11 years to explore the universe of atoms. Through craft and creative activities, participants will learn about the structure of the tiny atoms that make up our universe, and how these come together to make some familiar objects. They will learn about what makes atoms different from each other, and how these different atoms are categorised in the periodic table. Workshops can be between two hours and a school day in length, and tailored to the age of the participants. | ||||
| 2021 |
Dr Philippa Hoskin |
Faculty of Divinity | £675.30 | Sharing Impressions: learning about medieval seal matrices with metal detectorists |
| Sharing Impressions will share knowledge between metal detectorists, heritage professionals and academics around a very frequent metal detecting find: the medieval seal matrix. Workshops will disseminate new academic knowledge about seals; details of how to put them in context through research in heritage organisations; and metal detectorists’ knowledge about the context and nature of their finds. | ||||
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2021 |
Dr Kitty Jones | Centre for Family Research, Department of Psychology | £1500 | My Dad and Me: Our Story |
| ‘My Dad and Me: Our Story’ will be a short, free, downloadable picture book for fathers to use when talking to their children about starting a family using surrogacy. It will be a collaboration between researchers at the Centre for Family Research and an illustrator to create a parent-led resource for single fathers who used surrogacy. | ||||
| 2021 |
Swetha Kannan |
Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology | £1459 | Demystifying women's health through social media |
The project is targeted at communicating cutting-edge science related to women's health, and raising awareness on ovarian cancer, pre-eclampsia, smear tests, HPV vaccinations etc. through exciting educational content, infographics, innovative games and story-telling sessions, podcasts and short-interviews. |
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| 2021 |
Yufei Li |
Department of Architecture | £1500 | Manchuria Nostalgia: Bridging the Past and Present in Northeast China |
|
‘Manchuria Nostalgia’ is a shared virtual atlas designed for the local communities to discover, record and engage with the narratives and cultural heritage of Northeast China. The project proposes a public place-making exercise of the historic Manchuria in its current urban regenerations, by engaging locals in walking tours and sharing their observations on interactive maps. In an era when the material cities are changing drastically whilst history and memories are falling apart, we believe the use of visuals and writings to re-initiate the conversations about our transforming neighbourhood, and to rebuild the place in collective narratives as our live chorography. |
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| 2021 |
Qian Liu |
Faculty of Education | £1360 | ACTalk: Children Dialogue for Innovative Solutions to Global Challenges |
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ACTalk (All about Children’s Talk) is based on Qian Liu and Yun Long’s PhD research findings. The project aims to foster Chinese and British pupils' engagement in solving global challenges based on the UN's Sustainable Development Goals through intercultural dialogue. ACTalk intends to develop online dialogue supported by interactive technologies. The project will develop an international partnership with several interested schools, provide teacher workshops and launch a designed global challenge. In addition, pupils will video their solutions and share their insights via social media and at the Cambridge Festivals. |
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| 2021 |
Lucy Lloyd |
Department of Public Health and Primary Care | £1500 | LBGTQ+ health: what our research tells us? |
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LBGTQ+ health: what our research tells us? will engage the public in our research on the health of sexual minorities. We have described how LGBTQ+ people experience more health challenges and more problems accessing healthcare than their heterosexual counterparts. After five years of research, ten academic papers and a lot of help from our existing public involvement panel, we now want to widen engagement. We will do this via: online briefing to bring our findings together in accessible form; forum to connect academics, policymakers, our public panel and healthcare providers; and a Cambridge Festival interactive event. |
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| 2021 | Max Long | Faculty of History | £1294 |
'Secrets of Nature: science and natural history films in interwar Britain' |
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‘Secrets of Nature’ (https://secrets-of-nature.co.uk/) is an online resource created by Max Long as part of his PhD research at the History Faculty. It is named after a popular series of nature films produced in the 1920s and 1930s in Britain. The website offers historical context to these films and the people that made them. It also features links to view the films, and original historical materials. This project will develop and expand the website by working with teachers adapt it for classroom use. This will involve creating a teaching pack which will be free and available to all. |
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| 2021 |
Valentina Ndolo |
Department of Veterinary Medicine | £1500 | Tackling Anthrax in Northern Uganda |
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Valentina Ndolo has been working directly with livestock farmers, animal health workers, district veterinary officers, academicians, and representatives from the Ugandan Ministry of Agriculture since 2019 to investigate anthrax occurrence patterns in Northern Uganda. Anthrax affects animals, particularly grazing herbivores, and can also be transmitted to humans. Her public engagement project seeks to create awareness about anthrax transmission and prevention via one-on-one sessions with livestock farmers, stakeholders, and collaborators. She also aims to develop a farmer-led action plan involving the establishment of a collaboration between farmers to facilitate the implementation of a joint livestock vaccination campaign. |
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| 2021 | Dr Jenna Panter | MRC Epidemiology Unit | £1495 |
Creating community and stakeholder dialogue about active travel in Northstowe and Cambridgeshire |
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Our research team are planning to engage the public and policy stakeholders on our research in Northstowe about the role of financial incentives in promoting alternatives to the car. The team will create a small exhibition for use at community events orientated towards families. This aims to share information about the research we do with Cambridgeshire residents, to build curiosity about what’s going on to promote active travel in their area and what could be improved . To engage, consult and create a dialogue with a range of stakeholders, a short video, written summary, and a podcast will be produced. |
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| 2021 | Dr Jwalin Patel | Faculty of Education | £1500 |
Education for togetherness and harmony; developing a community of practice (practitioners) |
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Jwalin's PhD and postdoctoral research focuses on philosophies and practices of holistic education stemming from the global south, particularly India. He aims to develop a community of practice wherein teachers meet on regular basis to discuss and learn from each other. Additionally, he plans to engage the teachers in a cocreation process to develop a website (and potentially an edited book) on pedagogies and practices for education for togetherness and harmony. Furthermore, he hopes to conclude the series of discussions with an unconference. These will allow for dissemination of my research findings and scope for bottom-up teacher-driven educational change. |
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| 2021 |
Dr Joe Sutliff Sanders |
Faculty of Education | £1496 | A Workshop for Autistic Comics Creators to Improve Communication and Professional Creativity |
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Joe Sutliff Sanders and Jenny Gibson of the Faculty of Education have joined with the Lakes International Comic Art Festival (LICAF) to leverage academic research on comic books (Sanders) and autism (Gibson) with LICAF’s ongoing commitment to comics fans throughout the community. Together, they will launch a workshop with adult autistic participants to explore how web-based technologies can improve communication and professional artistic pathways for autistic comics creators. |
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| 2021 |
Dr Bethany Schmidt |
Institute of Criminology | £1499 | Democratising Democracy: Reimagining Prisoners as Active Citizens |
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Bethany, in collaboration with Healthier Democracies, will facilitate three workshops with prisoners to reflect on and document the democratic innovations they have developed whilst incarcerated. Mixed media creative expressions around the meanings of ‘citizenship’ and ‘civil death’ produced from these sessions will be exhibited at the Institute of Criminology. This adapted form of participatory photovoice has three primary aims: to illuminate an overlooked pain of imprisonment; to stimulate a public dialogue about political marginalisation and its social and democratic implications; and, to explore ways to promote and energise inclusive civic participation. An interactive webforum will be developed to enable wide and sustained engagement. |
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| 2021 |
Reetika Revathy Subramanian |
Department of Politics and International Studies, Centre for Gender Studies | £1500 | Climate Brides Podcast: (un)tying the knots between climate change and early marriage |
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Set against the backdrop of rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns, Climate Brides is an evidence-based, conversational podcast that seeks to (un)tie the knots between early marriage and the climate catastrophe in South Asia. Using the accessible format of conversations, with survivors, frontline workers, activists and academics in the region, this feminist collaborative project trains the spotlight on the historical compulsions and everyday negotiations of young women and girls confronting the biggest challenge of the 21st century. |
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| 2021 |
Veronica (Jingyi) Wang |
Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies | £1500 | Academic Bird: the school of critical thinking for a Chinese-speaking audience |
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Academic Bird is an online channel that bridges academic debate in the social sciences to the Chinese general public, inspired by doctoral research on Chinese media and internet culture. Using short videos of themed talks with scholars from different disciplines, the channel fills a gap for critical thinking platforms in the Chinese-speaking market. These talks quickly gained traction through social media with over 1,000,000 views and 45,000 followers, with a strong presence on Weibo. |
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2020 |
Dr Doroteya Vladimirova | Engineering / Institute for Manufacturing | £1500 |
Purpose beyond Profit |
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Doroteya will engage with small companies, responsible entrepreneurs and start-ups to help them re-define the future post-crisis direction of their business. Doroteya will design and produce an online workshop entitled “Purpose beyond Profit.” Building a business focused on purpose has never been a more urgent business strategy. Strong purpose statements flow from the impact generated by the business through its products, services, and behaviours. In this practical workshop, participants will follow a robust step-by-step approach to develop a clear purpose statement to help them secure support from critical stakeholders. This online workshop stems from Doroteya’s research on sustainable business models and her in-person workshops. |
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| 2020 | Ms Sharmila Parmanand |
Gender Studies (POLIS) |
£1500 | Reflecting on 20 years of the Palermo Protocol: lessons learned and future directions in anti-trafficking |
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Sharmila will work with the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women to produce and host at least ten episodes of video or audio podcasts that feature conversations with activists, scholars, and bureaucrats who work in anti-trafficking. These conversations examine 20 years of anti-trafficking practice since the adoption of the UN Palermo Protocol, and explore issues such as upholding the safety of migrant workers using a rights-based framework, the effects of raids, rescues, and rehabilitation interventions on sex workers, and donor accountability. Interviewees and other interested parties will be invited to reflect on these episodes in articles or blog posts. |
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| 2020 | Dr Clare Oliver-Williams |
Public Health & Primary Care |
£1500 | The ties that bind: Pregnancy Complications and Heart Disease |
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Clare Oliver-Williams and the artist Shady-Illustrations will further their partnership from Cambridge Creative Encounters to produce art depicting women with pregnancy complications having a greater risk of heart disease. |
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| 2020 | Dr Safet Hadzi Muhamedovic |
Divinity |
£1500 | Shared Sacred Landscapes: Interfaith Dialogues in Cambridge |
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Safet will develop an exhibition of anthropological photography, a public symposium and an interactive website to further our understanding of sacred environments shared by different religious communities. Inaugurated during the UN World Interfaith Harmony Week in 2021, the exhibition will showcase diverse examples of co-orchestrated rituals, feasts and shared sacred spaces that speak of rich historical and present-day encounters in the polities increasingly partitioned along the lines of religious identity. Building upon Safet’s ethnographic research of syncretic religion in the Mediterranean, the symposium will consider the importance of shared landscapes and their main obstacles in different contemporary contexts. The project will also establish a partnership and knowledge exchange between the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme (CIP) and the Cambridge Central Mosque. |
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| 2020 | Dr Irene Fabry-Tehranchi |
University Library, Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics |
£1500 | Cambridge University Library’s caricatures of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, 1870-71 |
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Irene Fabry-Tehranchi and Nick White will organise a physical and online exhibition of caricatures of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, 1870-71 at Cambridge University Library (May-June 2021). We want to foster public engagement with the events and their significance by producing a film explaining and demonstrating illustration printing techniques set in the library historical printing rooms. We will share the film with Cambridge History and Arts AS-level classes and invite them to visit the University Library’s historical presses, teaching them through primary historical sources, using historical games produced during the Commune. |
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| 2020 | Mr Charles Emogor |
Zoology |
£150 | Pangolino: An awareness-raising initiative to increase knowledge about pangolins through art and science communication. |
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Charles will use art and science communication to raise awareness of the conservation status of the pangolin – simultaneously one of the world’s most trafficked, yet least known wild mammals. This project will make his PhD work on the white-bellied pangolin in Nigeria more accessible to the public (primary/secondary school students in Nigeria and UK, and hunters in Nigeria). Students will create and share pangolin art through dedicated channels. Additionally, alongside hunters, students in Nigeria will be mobilised to celebrate 2021 World Pangolin Day. These hands-on experiences will help mobilize support for pangolin conservation and ultimately contribute towards reducing pangolin decline. |
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| 2020 | Dr Gilly Carr |
Archaeology |
£1472.50 | Crowdsourcing 1940 – 1946: A community project in the Channel Island of Alderney |
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Dr Carr seeks to collect material, through crowdsourcing, for an online, interactive map of Alderney (funded elsewhere) to showcase the multi-layered history of sites related to both the Nazi occupation during WWII and residents' experience of ‘Homecoming’ after the war. We will invite islanders to submit their own stories and photos related to place, and we will add images and historical material about the Holocaust history of the Island to accompany this. This will encourage residents to accept equally these two distinct histories of the Island while tying the sites into a global, critically important Holocaust memory. |
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| 2020 | Eng. Mariam Makramalla |
Education |
£1350 | Why Learn? |
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Mariam will work on a public engagement project that stems from the findings of her recent PhD. It aims at promoting a whole societal re-think of the value and purpose of schooling in Egypt. The project targets to promote awareness about the core essence of learning, thereby shifting the societal perception of the school mainly acting as a “certification institution”. This target is to be achieved through local collaborative partnerships with schools and the media. The aim is to raise awareness by triggering public debate amongst various platforms of engagement. |
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| 2020 | Ms Colleen Rollins |
Psychiatry |
£1480 | Sound and Vision: A collaboration between service-users, artists and the public to explore the lived experience of hallucinations |
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Colleen will coordinate Sound and Vision, where local artists and patients with schizophrenia and Parkinson's disease will collaboratively create artworks on their hallucinatory experiences to catalyse conversations with the public about our perceptions of the world. Artworks will be displayed at UK Science Festivals and as a digital (on-line) presentation with a variety of material explaining the current science on hallucinations. The public will be encouraged to complete on-line surveys collecting structured information on their personal experiences. This unique dataset will be the origin for exploration of the content of hallucinations across mental health and illness. |
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2019 |
Dr Chioma Achi | Veterinary Medicine | £1500 | Strengthening participation of poultry farmers in North-Western Nigeria in the fight against antimicrobial resistance. |
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Chioma engaged with poultry farmers in Kaduna State, Nigeria, to enable them to gain better understanding of the dangers of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This aims at improving global public health. The project leverages existing collaboration through the Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN), and is based on ongoing research into the genome of AMR Salmonella. |
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| 2019 | Dr Aude Belin-Rauscent |
Psychology |
£610 | Become a neurosurgeon and learn the procedure used to implant life changing deep brain stimulating electrodes! |
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As part of the Cambridge Science Festival, Aude uses a neurosurgeon role play experience to visualise the complex ‘puzzle’ structure of the brain. The brain is composed by interconnected regions, which all play a specific role, the alteration of which results in functional deficits manifested as the symptoms of neuropsychiatric disorders. The hands-on activity help to increase the awareness of the importance of animal research in the development of new therapeutic strategies. |
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| 2019 | Thomas Matthews Boehmer |
Archaeology |
£600 | Under Our Feet: Retracing Ancient Lives |
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‘Under Our Feet’ stems from a concern that important aspects of the UK’s more distant past are overlooked due to a lack of signposting. Archaeology destroys features in the act of digging them, and excavated materials often disappear into (publicly inaccessible) storage. This can make us forget features of the past, as the space which they occupied is turned over to new uses. Thomas engaged with Cambridge residents and tourists by using chalk drawings and boards to highlight spaces of history within the city. |
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| 2019 | Dr Laura Davies |
English |
£1440 | A Good Death: Literature as Reflective Resource for End-of-Life Care Practitioners |
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Laura engaged with end-of-life/bereavement care practitioners as part of an inspiring one-day knowledge exchange event. This enabled them to explore and directly co-create a text-based resource combining the professional practice and experience of end-of-life CARE practitioners with research on the enriching properties of death writing. |
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| 2019 | Dr Tanja Fuchsberger |
Psychology |
£1350 | Memories - how they come and go, or sometimes get lost |
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Our memory defines who we are. Yet there are many open questions concerning how memories are formed and retained in the brain — how does it happen that some memories are stored only for a little while before they fade away, whereas others stay with us for a lifetime? Tanja’s work focuses on Alzheimer’s disease (AD). In close collaboration with relevant charities, Tanja created a short film that portrays research on the mechanisms of memory and how it relates to finding treatment strategies for AD. |
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| 2019 | Dr Maziyar Jalaal |
Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics |
£800 | Optics for Everyone |
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Optics plays an essential role in our daily life, from our eyes to our cell phones. Maziyar is using an optical system to visualize algae algal blooms, and their threat to global health. Working with school teachers and children between the age of 5 and 17, Maziyar used Optics for All (OfA), a modular low-cost toolkit, to make optics education accessible, fun, and memorable for students and science teachers. |
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| 2019 | Catherine Jones |
Psychology |
£650 | In Conversation with Fathers |
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Catherine organised a panel discussion with fathers who are highly involved in childcare, which will be recorded live and turned into a podcast. This helped to spark conversations about the roles of fathers in caregiving among expectant and new parents or those considering starting a family in the future. |
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| 2019 | Dr Ulla Sovio |
Obstetrics & Gynaecology |
£760 | It takes 3 to Tango: Key players for a successful pregnancy |
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Ulla hosted an informative, interactive and entertaining public engagement event at the Cambridge Science Festival to provide basic information about pregnancy and associated research. In particular, she developed displays focusing on maternal health, placental function and fetal growth. |
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| 2019 | Danika Parikh |
Archeology |
£1000 | RePresent |
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Danika worked on voicing ‘untold histories’ from the perspective of minority communities living within Cambridge. This built on decolonial and anti-racist research done at the collections at the University’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA). |
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| 2019 | Dr Teresa Perez |
Asian and Middle Eastern Studies |
£1492 | Valuing plastic: Evaluating the potential to derive economic, environmental and social value from plastic waste in South Africa |
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Teresa collaborated with church and women's networks in South Africa to identify ways in which local residents can be incentivised to consume less single-use plastic and donate their recyclable plastic. Through participant observation, public forums and focus groups, Teresa and her collaborators will help establish the recycling initiative, identify challenges to plastic recycling in townships, and help develop best practice. This was done with a view to cross-fertilising similar initiatives across Southern Africa, South East Asia and the Carribbean. |
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| 2019 | Hamish Symington |
Plant Sciences |
£450 | Flower Power: breeding crop plants that are better at being pollinated |
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Hamish developed a freely downloadable, easily accessible app that lets users experience and retrace Hamish's research into crop plant breeding and pollination. Users are prompted to make choices, try out different plant variations, let bees fly around between different plants - and thus learn about key challenges in the context of a worldwide decline in insect populations, but also about experimental research as conducted at Cambridge. |
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| 2019 | Erin Whitcroft |
English |
£1412 | Collaborative Choreography |
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Erin and her collaborators from the Cambridge-based charity "Arts and Minds" delivered dance and poetry workshops for 15 young women (14-15 years old) encountering difficulties with confidence and negative body image. By engaging the participants through dance and poetry, Erin aimed to make a positive contribution to their body image. By enabling them as ‘choreographers’, she hopes to develop their confidence. |
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| 2019 | Rebecca Haboucha |
Archaeology |
£334 | Workshop on Climate change and cultural heritage in the Dehcho Region, Canada |
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Rebecca engaged indigenous communities in Canada on the results of her research into their perceptions of cultural heritage in the face of climate change, in which these communities played a key role as interview partners. Rebecca delivered a three-part workshop and produce an easily accessible booklet to communicate her findings and discuss their implications. |
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