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Engaging Research

An Open Research University: Embedding public engagement within the research culture of the OU

Engaging Research

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Category Archives: Engaging Research Awards

Fairness in knowing: How should we engage with the sciences?

Posted on Wednesday, 20 February 2019 by Richard Holliman
Professor Richard Holliman, The Open University.

Professor Richard Holliman, The Open University.

This year, The Open University celebrates its 50th anniversary. Happy birthday to us!

As part of this celebration, the university is hosting an exciting programme of events and activities.

Yesterday I watched my colleague Martin Weller discuss the ongoing (and increasing influence) of openness in education. (You can access a recording of Martin’s lecture from the link in the previous sentence. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to watch the recording.)

It seems fitting, given the complementary nature of our work, that I was scheduled to deliver my inaugural lecture in this programme shortly after Martin.

Watching the lecture
If you’d like to attend the lecture on 12th March (6-7pm GMT) in person, select How to register. (It’s free to attend, but you need a ticket.)

From 5pm on the day, colleagues will be demonstrating various examples of engagement outside the lecture theatre.

To watch the lecture online, select Watch the webinar. The link will become live shortly before the start of the event. You can submit questions via email or Twitter from the same page.

The lecture will be recorded and made freely available after 12 March.

Continue reading →

Posted in Engaging Research Awards, Events, Leadership, Mission, Professionalisation, Projects, Recognition, School-University Engagement, Training | Tagged An open research university, catalyst project, CENTA, Creating Publics, culture change, Denbigh school, Digital engagement, Engaging opportunities, engaging with school students, Inaugural lecture, lecture, NCCPE, PCST, PER Catalyst, postgraduate research, Public engagement with research, RCUK, science communication, STFC, SUPI, UKRI

Supporting Engaged Research Leadership

Posted on Thursday, 10 November 2016 by Richard Holliman
Professor Richard Holliman, The Open University. Credit: Michael Francis.

Professor Richard Holliman, The Open University. Credit: Michael Francis.

In our final report to Research Councils UK on the Open University’s Public Engagement with Research Catalyst I argued that ‘engaged leadership’ could be described as a paradox (Holliman et al., 2015):

“Over the course of my career I’ve witnessed the emergence of engagement as a concept in search of a clear definition. A range of factors, including policy changes, technology, and the practices of engaged research, introduced the idea of the ‘dialogic turn’ (Davies, 2013) where ‘bottom up’ and contextual approaches have been championed as potential solutions to questions of trust, openness, transparency and democracy (Irwin, 2008).

What’s fairly consistent in these arguments, if not necessarily in the practical implementation of them, is that ‘top down’, imposed solutions are generally problematic and ultimately self-defeating. In this context it’s possible to argue that the concept of engaged leadership is a paradox.”
(Holliman et al., 2015, pp. 12-13)

You can read the report to see how I resolved my instincts for engagement with a need to direct and deliver change across a complex institution.

Continue reading →

Posted in Conferences, Engaging Research Awards, Presentations, Recognition, Resources, Training | Tagged An open research university, Catalyst, catalyst project, culture change, Dunedin, engaged research awards, Engaging Leadership, NCCPE, New Zealand, PER Catalyst, PER Mandate, Public engagement with research, RCUK

The battle for engaged research

Posted on Monday, 7 September 2015 by Richard Holliman
Professor Richard Holliman, The Open University. Credit: Jane Perrone.

Professor Richard Holliman, The Open University. Credit: Jane Perrone.

I’ve long admired the work of my colleague Professor Martin Weller. Studies conducted in the Institute of Educational Technology (IET), in particular research exploring the practices of digital scholarship, were central to the development of the Open University’s proposal to RCUK to become one of eight Public Engagement with Research Catalyst universities. Since that earlier work Martin has further explored ideas about openness in higher education, culminating in his latest book, The battle for open: How Openness Won and Why it Doesn’t Feel Like Victory.

We’ve recently completed the work of the OU’s RCUK-funded Public Engagement with Research (PER) Catalyst, An Open Research University, publishing our final report (Holliman, et al. 2015). As such, members of the OU’s PER Catalyst project team and I have spent recent months consolidating the learning from our project with the aim of sharing lessons learned and resources with other universities, including the RCUK Catalyst Seed Funded universities.

Continue reading →

Posted in Communication, Engaging Research Awards, Projects, Recognition | Tagged An open research university, Catalyst, catalyst project, Creating Publics, culture change, Digital engagement, engaged research awards, engaging research, impact, NCCPE, PER Catalyst, postgraduate research, Public engagement with research, RCUK

Celebrating excellence in engaged research

Posted on Tuesday, 3 March 2015 by Richard Holliman
Dr Richard Holliman, The Open University’s Champion for Public Engagement with Research

Dr Richard Holliman, The Open University

The winners of the Open University’s 2015 Engaging Research Award Scheme were announced in early February 2015.

The scheme was devised as part of the Open University’s RCUK-funded Public Engagement with Research Catalyst. It was designed to find and celebrate high-quality engaged research at the OU, demonstrating the different ways that researchers meaningfully interact with various stakeholders over any or all stages of a research process, from issue formulation, the production or co-creation of new knowledge, to knowledge evaluation and dissemination.

As the Chair of the Assessment Panel, I was extremely grateful to the six judges for their careful assessments of the entries. I was particularly delighted that two of the winners for the 2014 Engaging Research Award Scheme, Thea Herodotou and Natalia Kucirkova, agreed to act as judges for this 2015 competition.

2015 Engaging Research Award Winners: L-R: Richard Holliman, Paul Stenner, Katy Jordan, Graham Pike, Rosa Hoekstra, Francesca Benatti (on behalf of Elton Barker), Alan Bassindale, Verina Waights, Martin Weller, Cindy Kerawalla, Saskia van Manen and Fiona McKerlie

2015 Engaging Research Award Winners and Highly Commended Entries: L-R: Richard Holliman, Paul Stenner, Katy Jordan, Graham Pike, Rosa Hoekstra, Francesca Benatti (on behalf of Elton Barker), Alan Bassindale, Verina Waights, Martin Weller, Cindy Kerawalla, Saskia van Manen and Fiona McKerlie. Photo: Chris Valentine.

The standard of the entries to this round of the scheme was very high, with the judging panel awarding prizes to three winners of the scheme as well as recognizing six further highly commended entries.

Continue reading →

Posted in Engaging Research Awards, Events, Recognition | Tagged An open research university, Catalyst, catalyst project, culture change, engaged research awards, engaging research, PER Catalyst, postgraduate research, Public engagement with research, RCUK

Celebrating engaged research

Posted on Friday, 17 October 2014 by Ann Grand

Dr Ann Grand, The Open University

Our seminar this month was a celebration of the diversity of engaging research at the Open University. To launch the second Engaging Research awards, we asked some of the winners of the inaugural awards to reflect on what ‘engaging research’ means for them in their research and practice.

Continue reading →

Posted in Engaging Research Awards, Recognition | Tagged An open research university, Catalyst, catalyst project, citizen science, culture change, engaged research awards, engaging research, engaging with school students, PER Catalyst, Public engagement with research, recognition, reward

Engaging religious practitioners in London

Posted on Monday, 11 August 2014 by John Maiden
Dr John Maiden, The Open University

Dr John Maiden, The Open University

Earlier this year members of the Religious Studies department – Dr John Maiden, Professor John Wolffe and Dr Gavin Moorhead – were awarded an ‘Engaging Research’ award by the Open University for their work on the ‘Building on History: Religion in London’ project. With this in mind, now seemed a good moment to reflect on the project.

The project was a knowledge exchange initiative, running between January 2012 and January 2013, which engaged religious publics in London with recent scholarship on the the city’s modern religious history.

Continue reading →

Posted in Engaging Research Awards, Projects, Recognition | Tagged An open research university, Blogging, catalyst project, Digital engagement, engaging research, engaging with school students, PER Catalyst, Public engagement with research

Managing ecosystems: research impact through engagement

Posted on Wednesday, 23 April 2014 by Emma Rothero
Emma Rothero, The Open University

Emma Rothero, The Open University

An award-winning, externally-facing partnership with research at the core
I don’t think of myself as an academic. Before I took on my current role as an Outreach Coordinator within the award-winning Floodplain Meadows research team at the Open University I’d worked for 12 years for the Environment Agency, delivering policy, legislation and proactive conservation projects ‘on the ground’ in Dorset, Wiltshire and a little bit of Hampshire. I’d worked with a wide range of conservation and community partners, occasionally getting cross with flood defence engineers. In short, I came to this job for a change!

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Posted in Engaging Research Awards, Projects, Recognition | Tagged An open research university, CEPSAR, citizen science, Ecosystems, engaging research, Public engagement with research, scientific citizenship

Engaging research and the ‘Our Story App’

Posted on Friday, 4 April 2014 by Natalia Kucirkova
Natalia Kucirkova, The Open University

Natalia Kucirkova, The Open University

I recently won one the the OU’s first ever Engaging Research Awards. When I heard about the engaging research awards, I thought ‘hmn…How can there be an award for something which ought to be integral to any good piece of research? Isn’t engagement with publics the defining characteristic underlying all research endeavours? And how can one judge a piece of research to be more engaged than another?’

The more I thought about it, the more I realised how engagement with publics has been an underlying principle of the Our Story project. The story-making tablet/smartphone app (called “Our Story”) was developed in parallel with my PhD research and has led to a number of projects integral to my doctoral work but also expanding it to other areas, research institutions and publics.

Continue reading →

Posted in Engaging Research Awards, Projects, Recognition | Tagged An open research university, Digital engagement, engaging research, engaging with school students, Media, postgraduate research, Public engagement with research

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