Research Projects

'EEEP' - Enhancing Engineering Education Project, with WSU and SU

Current Projects

Centre for Global Learning: Education and Attainment

'EEEP'  - Enhancing Engineering Education Project, with WSU and SU

Learning Gains: A study of the use of the standardised test CLA+ for undergraduates in four institutions

Current Projects

Centre for Global Learning: Education and Attainment

Learning Gains: A study of the use of the standardised test CLA+ for undergraduates in four institutions

ifeed: User-centred development of an online and mobile phone intervention to support infant feeding choice and confidence to sustain breastfeeding and/or safe formula feeding

Current Projects

Centre for Advances in Behavioural Science | Health and Life Sciences

Ifeed was launched in August 2018 to coincide with World Breastfeeding week.  In the first week it had 800 views and was shared by organisations supporting mothers and babies across the UK and globally.  We are currently seeking further feedback from parents about how the site influences their feeding choices and are preparing to evaluate the site for its influence on infant feeding behaviours. 

The Roles of IP and Diversity in the Creative Industries

Current Projects

Centre for Dance Research

The objective is to inform policy-making in both South Africa and the UK in relation to IP and diversity strategies for the micro creative industries and international trade. It is also to create strong and lasting conversations among academic researchers, creative industry participants, policy-makers and practitioners across South Africa and the UK; and to foster new academic links between South Africa and the UK through which new research proposals can emerge. This project, and subsequent ones arising out of network activities will also help to strengthen understanding of, and adoption of good practice around IP and diversity by arts and cultural practitioners, thus ensuring greater sustainability for this sector. 

Waste Food-Energy-Water Urban Living Labs - mapping and reducing waste in the food-energy-water nexus

Current Projects

Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience

We aim to map and substantially reduce waste in the urban food-energy-water (FEW) nexus in city-regions across three continents: Europe, Africa and South America. We will establish four Urban Living Labs (ULL) of key stakeholders who will undertake participatory research to: a) map resource flows; b) identify critical dysfunctional linear pathways; c) agree the response most appropriate to the local context (e.g. policy intervention, technology diffusion); d) model the market and non-market economic value of each intervention; and e) engage with decision makers to close each loop.

Organic-PLUS

Current Projects

Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience

The overall aim of the ‘Organic-PLUS project’ (O+) is to provide high-quality, trans-disciplinary, scientifically informed decision support to help all actors in the organic sector, including national and regional policy makers, to reach the next level of the organic success story in Europe.

ÜberReste. Strategien des Bleibens in den darstellenden Künsten (On Remnants and Vestiges. Strategies of Remaining in the Performing Arts)

Current Projects

Centre for Dance Research

The project investigates the challenges inherent in remaining and preserving in the fields of dance, music theatre and performance that otherwise operate under the primacy of presence. 

Life on the Breadline: Christianity, Poverty and Politics in the 21st Century city

Current Projects

Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations

The aim of the ‘Life on the Breadline…’ project is to understand how the social context resulting from the 'age of austerity' has affected Christian engagement with poverty in the UK and the theological motivations, which underpin it, in order to facilitate the development of better informed government policy and more effective faith-based activism thereby reducing urban social exclusion and inequality. 

OPENMED: Exploring Intercultural Learning through Open Education Practices across the Mediterranean

Current Projects

Centre for Global Learning: Education and Attainment

OpenMed ‘Opening up Education in South-Mediterranean Countries’, is an international cooperation involving five partners from Europe and nine from the South-Mediterranean (S-M) region (Morocco, Palestine, Egypt and Jordan). The project is focused on how universities from the designated countries, and other S-M countries, can join the action as community partners in the adoption of strategies and channels that embrace the principles of openness and reusability within the context of higher education. Open Education represents transparency, equity and participation. Such values are core in widening participation and building capacity in Open Education Practices, important to the national contexts of the Mediterranean countries.

HACK: Hacking Education by improving open e-learning teachers' competences (E+Hack)

Current Projects

Centre for Global Learning: Education and Attainment

Quantum Thinking for Agroecology

Completed Projects

Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience

This research programme aims to explore the Principle of Complementarity or Wave-Particle Duality as it applies to agriculture

Tripura Agroecology Partnership

Current Projects

Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience

This project aims to link nutritional security with selective agroecological diversication for resilient rural communities.

Water quality performance of permeable pavements

Completed Projects

Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience

Permeable pavements (PPS) are often the most appropriate sustainable drainage (SuDS) device for highly urbanised areas and can be used for parking areas, low speed roads and landscaped areas.

Sustainable management of an Ethiopian rangeland for biodiversity and pastoralists

Completed Projects

Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience

This project looks at how sustainable management of the Liben Plain enhances livelihoods and food security for 10,000 pastoralists, prevents mainland Africa’s first bird extinction and integrates biodiversity conservation into Ethiopian rangeland recovery.

DRIVER: Data Responsive Initiatives as a Vehicle for achieving Equity in Results

Current Projects

Centre for Global Learning: Education and Attainment

DRIVER is a West Midlands Regional partnership project to address barriers to student success that uses learner analytics to personalise support for HE students.

SHIFFT: Supporting Holistic “Innovation” and the diFFusion of Agroecolgical innovaTion

Current Projects

Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience

This project will look at how processes of ‘innovation’ in agroecology and food sovereignty – what does it look like, is it different from other innovation approaches, and how do agroecological innovations spread around? The goal is to support farmers, communities and social movements in developing approaches to innovation that can help to develop agroecology as an alternative paradigm to corporate-industrial agriculture.

Progression of Accessibility Centres in higher Education for Students with disabilities in North Africa (PACES)

Current Projects

Centre for Post-Digital Cultures

Ultimately, the aim of this project is to develop socioeconomic growth by modernising Higher Education and making it more accessible to students with special needs, thereby enabling Students with Disabilities to enter the workforce and to become independent and economically less disadvantaged.

CreativeCulture

Current Projects

Centre for Post-Digital Cultures

The CreativeCulture project aims to expand the GameChangers programme to address educational challenges within the context of inclusive learning for learners from the rural parts of Malaysia Borneo.

BEACONING

Current Projects

Centre for Post-Digital Cultures

BEACONING sets a forefront in multifaceted education technologies through large-scale piloting of a digital learning platform that blend physical and digital spaces. As innovation action strategies, pilots combine opportunities for new ICTs in multiple ways that merge learning acquired in formal, non-formal and informal means, developing the skills for today’s abled and disabled learners and workforce.

From the Grounds Up: The Coffee Shop Industry and the Circular Economy

Current Projects

Centre for Business in Society

This study aims to explore how businesses and consumers can engage in the circular economy, the facilitators and inhibitors for doing so, and the importance of these actions for sustainable economies and societies. The UK and Germany are used as two case studies for exploring how and why the coffee shop industry takes part in the circular economy.