chloe sheppard

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Benefits of Public Engagement with Research Chloe Sheppard RCUK Strategy Unit www.rcuk.ac.uk/per

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Page 1: Chloe sheppard

Benefits of Public Engagement with ResearchChloe SheppardRCUK Strategy Unit

www.rcuk.ac.uk/per

Page 2: Chloe sheppard

RCUK Public Engagement with Research Strategy – our Vision

• To enable society to value and have confidence in research processes and outputs;

• For public engagement to inspire young people to pursue research careers; and

• To increase the societal impact of research by creating a culture where:– The research sector and researchers themselves value public

engagement as an important activity;– An awareness of social and ethical issues informs research

decisions.

Page 3: Chloe sheppard

RCUK Public Engagement with Research Strategy – our rationale

• If we involve and listen to the public (and encourage our research communities to do so) then our decisions and research should be informed by their views, and therefore more likely to have enhanced impact in return for the investment.

• Similarly, if we talk with the public (and encourage our research communities to talk to the public) about the outputs of our research and their implications and applications then society will share in the benefits of that knowledge, whether for their health, wealth or culture, and therefore helping to maximise the impact of that research.

• And if we encourage researchers to interact with schools to enrich students’ experiences then we can help improve the supply of skilled people to the research base and the UK economy and encourage more to act as informed citizens.

Page 4: Chloe sheppard

What’s in it for me?

Benefits of public engagement for researchers:• Skills development• Career enhancement• Enhancing your research quality and its impact• New research perspectives• Higher personal and institutional profile• Influence and networking opportunities• Forming new collaborations and partnerships• Enjoyment and personal reward• Additional funding• Increasing awareness of the value of research

to UK society• Increasing student recruitment• Inspiring the next generational of researchers

www.rcuk.ac.uk/per

Page 5: Chloe sheppard

Career inspiration

• ‘my promotion to professor of physics came a few years early’ Professor Jim Al-Khalili, University of Surrey

• ‘I won a number of national and international research accolades for which I would not have been recognised if I had not been engaging with the public on a regular basis’ Dr Kelly BeruBe, Cardiff University

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Raising your profile

• ‘[Public engagement] has certainly led to meetings that would otherwise have not occurred and has had a reputation-enhancing effect with the wider scientific community’ Professor Paddy Regan, University of Surrey

• ‘Some important impacts were the collaboration between scientists and artists…opening up future possibilities of work and projects, including offers of work’ Dr Matthew Studley, University of the West of England

• ‘public engagement is important to the reputation of the university, and to promoting greater understanding of the value of the university and its role in research’ University of Manchester case study

Page 7: Chloe sheppard

Developing skills

• ‘If you can convince a 12 or 13 year old that what you are doing is useful, you get more self confidence... with them you have to drop the jargon and I learnt skills for speaking to non-technical audiences’ Aikaterini Chatsiou, University of Essex

• I felt that the questions from the public made the researchers stop and think as they raised issues and expressed views that otherwise might not have been considered’ Jackie Pearson, National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.

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Enhancing your research

• ‘The more spontaneous responses of the public audience put some of the research project’s hypotheses under real pressure’ Professor Tom Betteridge of Oxford Brookes University

• ‘There are experiments we wouldn’t have done without public engagement’ Professor Nancy Rothwell, University of Manchester

• ‘The flood risk models are better calibrated to the local environment through being informed by the public’s local knowledge’ Professor Sarah Whatmore, University of Oxford

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Where next?

www.rcuk.ac.uk/per

www.publicengagement.ac.uk