Tag: research

Celebrating the new £10m ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures

Posted on by Judith Squires

By Professor Judith Squires, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost

Image of Judith Squires After two years of online celebrations, I was exceptionally proud to join colleagues in person last month for a Provost Celebration of Academic Achievement. We were celebrating the major £10m funding success of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Centre for Sociodigital Futures, led by the University of Bristol.

The Bristol-led Centre for Sociodigital Futures has an ambitious research agenda, focussing on the intersections of digital technologies and social practices, and what might be done to drive these towards fair and sustainable ways of life.

Its aim, as described by its Co-Directors, Professors Susan Halford and Dale Southerton, is to “investigate these sociodigital futures in the making across diverse domains of social life and different areas of digital innovation to explore where it might be possible to tip the balance towards inclusive, reflexive and sustainable trajectories.”

How do our sociodigital futures take shape?

Digital technologies are transforming everyday life and bold claims are being made about how intelligent robots, autonomous vehicles and the ‘metaverse’ will shape our futures. These claims are important because they drive corporate investments, government policies and business strategies, and they inform our hopes and fears for daily life. Yet we know from the past that futures claimed rarely turn out as predicted.

The interplay of digital technologies with the complex realities of everyday life produces multiple and unexpected outcomes, with far reaching implications for the economy, politics and social life. And, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, climate crisis, and widening inequalities, what lies ahead seems more uncertain than ever.

The new Centre aims to generate new approaches to fairer and more sustainable societies; to render emerging sociodigital futures both “intelligible and actionable” with direct impact on policymaking, organisational practice, community participation and technology design.

A flagship investment and a true collaboration

The ESRC Research Centres are flagship investments, which are expected to be national and international Centres of Excellence. Only four or five centres are funded every two years, across the full range of Social Science disciplines. In this round, there were 89 original expressions of interest to the ESRC, with five bids funded.

It brings together world-leading expertise across eight schools in Social Sciences, Engineering and the Arts, and will be led from the University of Bristol. Academic partners are based at the Universities of Edinburgh, Lancaster, Birmingham, Goldsmiths University of London, and University of the Arts, London.

The centre will also work in collaboration with core strategic partners BT, Defra, Maybe, Locality, the National Cybersecurity Centre and UNESCO, and has an international partner network across five continents.

The ambitious research agenda will explore how digital devices, services and data are shaping (and being shaped by) everyday practices of consuming, caring, learning, moving (people and goods) and organising.

At the same time, the Centre will explore how cutting-edge technologies – artificial intelligence, high performance networks, robotics, and augmented/ virtual and extended reality – are imagined and innovated for a range of futures linked to these areas of practice.

The event itself showed the extent of this collaboration and we heard speeches from Professor Phil Taylor (PVC Research), Professor Simon Tormey (Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences & Law), Professor Karla Pollmann (Dean of Arts) and Professor Ian Bond (Dean of Engineering), as well as from Susan and Dale.

We were also pleased to welcome some of our partners and raise a celebratory glass with them.

Next steps

A lot of preparation work for the Centre for Sociodigital Futures is already underway, with a planned started date of 1 May 2022. The Centre will run for an initial five years, but it is expected there will be opportunities to renew funding beyond that.

I want to pay tribute to Professors Susan Halford and Dale Southerton, and the team in our Research and Enterprise division (RED), who supported the bid development, and congratulations to everyone who contributed to this fantastic achievement.

Find out more about the ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures on our website.

Celebrating Global Challenges Research Fund successes

Posted on by Judith Squires

By Professor Judith Squires, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost

It was a great pleasure to mark the first in the 2020 series of Provost Celebrations of Academic Achievement by welcoming colleagues to Royal Fort House to celebrate our Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) successes on 16 January.

Provost Professor Judith Squires celebrates our Global Challenges funding success with colleagues
Professor Judith Squires (Deputy Vice-Chancellor & Provost) and Professor Paddy Ireland (Interim PVC Research) celebrating the GCRF successes with award-holders and colleagues from RED.

The GCRF is an initiative driven by the United Nation’s ‘2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’, which has at its heart 17 Sustainable Development Goals. These goals represent a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. In response to the 2030 Agenda, the Government published its aid strategy which aims to:

      • address global challenges through disciplinary and interdisciplinary research;
      • strengthen capability for research and innovation, with developing countries and the UK; and
      • enable an agile response to emergencies and opportunities.

      All GCRF research projects must also focus on delivering benefits and outcomes which promote the welfare and economic development of Lower and Middle Income Countries (LMICs).

      We have been extremely successful in securing funding via this scheme here at the University of Bristol.  This success was facilitated by the early development of Bristol’s Global Challenges strategy, which Research England commended to other higher education institutions (HEIs) to encourage best practice, acknowledging the excellence and effort demonstrated by Bristol’s approach. The strategy was been expertly supported by our Global Challenges Steering Group, composed of experts in Official Development Assistance, with representation from Bristol’s Research Institutes and Faculty Research Directors.  Their guidance has been invaluable – and is much appreciated.

      As a result of our strategy, the University has been incredibly successful in attracting funding from the GCRF, with a success rate above 40%, and around £2 million a year coming in via QR funding (quality-related research funding, determined by the periodic assessment of HEIs) to support the activities outlined in the strategy. Since 2016, we have secured over 130 external awards worth more than £30 million.  Two examples include:

      • Professor Matthew Avison received £1.8m to lead the One Health Drivers of Antibacterial Resistance in Thailand (OH-DART) consortium. Working with colleagues at the Universities of Exeter and Bath, Mahidol University, Chulabhorn Research Institute and the NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. The consortium’s aim is to define and prioritise the drivers of antibacterial drug resistance in humans in the community in Thailand, taking a multi-disciplinary approach.
      • Professor Leon Tikly and partners from India, Rwanda, Somalia and South Africa have received £4.65m to Transform Educations Systems for Sustainable Development. The aim of this research is to develop an understanding of how education systems can act as drivers of sustainable development.

      Many congratulations to everyone – academics and professional services – involved in these projects, and all the 130 projects, secured since 2016.  Congratulations too to Professor Helen Lambert, who has been appointed as Global Challenge Leader for Health on a part-time secondment to UKRI to March 2021.

      The event last week was held as a small ‘thank you’ to all those colleagues who have worked so hard to obtain these important GCRF funding awards and to help pursue the sustainable development goals. May our success in addressing the global challenges identified in the 2030 agenda for sustainable development continue.

Provost Celebration of Academic Achievement Receptions

Posted on by Judith Squires

By Professor Judith Squires, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost

On Thursday last week (21 March) colleagues from across the University gathered together in Royal Fort House to celebrate the achievements of  Bristol Futures and to recognise colleagues who have worked so hard to deliver this transformational educational initiative. This event was part of a new series of monthly Provost Academic Achievement Receptions that I established when I took up my new role of Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost in January, designed to recognise just some of the many outstanding academic achievements of staff across the University.

The January celebration marked the Outstanding Ofsted result obtained by the School of Education, in which our PGCE programme was deemed outstanding in every category. Sadly, this event was affected by the threat of snow and amber weather warnings, so we had to wait for our February celebration of EPSRC CDT success to really get the series underway.

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Celebrating the real difference our universities make

Posted on by Guy Poppy

By Professor Nishan Canagarajah, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research.

Working at one of the UK’s leading universities, in a role where I regularly meet with students, researchers and peers from across the higher education sector, it’s easy to forget how extraordinary this environment is.

I use the word extraordinary, which is both accurate and perhaps a little misleading. What happens at universities is extraordinary in that they provide unique and far-reaching opportunities for people to discover, learn, collaborate, push the boundaries of knowledge and grow new ideas into ventures that drive world-leading innovation.  But it’s also ordinary in that the challenges that we work on are global and confront us all, in our everyday lives.

In the 25 years that I’ve been with the University of Bristol, I’m continually impressed and inspired by how ideas are taken to fruition, sometimes in unexpected ways and often to levels of success that have surpassed expectations – and made an impact on a vast scale.

I am immensely proud of the work of our academics here at the University of Bristol who are working with fellow researchers in more than 40 countries, improving health, alleviating poverty, driving technological innovation.

This month sees the launch of MadeAtUni, a campaign spearheaded by Universities UK that aims to highlight the enormous impact that UK universities make on our lives.

One of Bristol’s many seminal research projects is included in ‘The UK’s Best Breakthroughs: 100+ Ways Universities Have Improved Everyday Life’, produced by UUK as part of the campaign. (more…)