Social impact

In addition to impactful research our teaching, scholarship and professional practices critically engage in social change with local and global communities. The students on our programmes undertake professional placements in formal educational settings, within community development, in informal adult and lifelong learning projects. Staff engage in various community and place-based activities which make significant strides towards more socially just societies.  Some current examples include:

  • Activate is a community-based programme which provides local communities an introduction to Community Development (Co-ordinator: Martin). It works in partnership with local agencies and organisations to explore community activism and assess ways to challenge disadvantage and discrimination
  • White Water Writers is a project which works with various groups, including primary and secondary school pupils, looked after children and young and adult offenders to write a novel in a week and so far has had more than 2000 people participate in the project (Co-ordinator: Skipper).
  • The Food Train Partnership Project for 'Eat Well Age Well' (PI: Reid, Lido and Huie) funded by Eat Well Age Well via The National Lottery Community Fund & University of Glasgow Knowledge Exchange funds provided links between food insecurity and risk of malnutrition with negative psycho-social outcomes, and in the context of Covid-19 recovery, food services and we continue to write up this research for publication

We extensively support the capacity development of our staff  and students, including our doctoral students. For example, we have supported, Keneilwe Molosi a former PhD student, and lecturer in Adult Education at University of Botswana, in gaining getting a Fulbright Scholarship. Also, Keneilwe, together with three other former PhD students, all now university lecturers, one at the University and two at other African universities have been supported in collaboration research linked to our international development agenda addressing household inequalities