A celebration to showcase our Institute Academy Programme 2023-24 cohort

Our Institute Academy Programme has come to an end and, to celebrate, we held an IAP Showcase and Celebration event to conclude the cohorts’ learnings and projects.

On Tuesday 16 July, we hosted the event at Jubilee Conference Centre on Jubilee Campus as an opportunity for the cohort to present their work to their fellow cohort, KE leads, other colleagues at the university who are interested in the programme.

A reminder of the programmes

Our Institute Academy Programmes are a one-year, competitive entry programmes for University of Nottingham academics who want to build knowledge and skills in policy impact or public engagement.

There are three programmes for our academics:

• The Policy Impact Pathways Programme (PIPP) aimed at early career researchers interested in policy impact
• The Policy Impact Accelerator Programme (PIAP) aimed at mid-career researchers wishing to deepen their knowledge and skills in policy impact
• The Civic Impact Champions Programme (CICP) aimed at researchers at all career levels, with an interest in responding to local need and developing skills in partnership working

The class of 2023-24 IAP

At the IAP showcase event, we heard from a selection of our current cohort, presenting their research, what they gained from the programme and what the next steps in their research are.

From the PIPP cohort, we heard from Karen Alvery, Camilla Babbage on their research on Accessing Health Services for people with Tourette Syndrome and Christopher Brignell who is researching Maths education.

From the PIAP cohort, we heard from Venga Sarma, who organised a roundtable discussion on educational inequalities in Sri Lanka and Sarah Cassidy whose research focuses on the Influencing suicide prevention policy in partnership with autistic people.

From the CICP cohort, we heard from Mark Rawlinson, who is researching participatory photography sessions to highlight the local community and Simon Welham, who focused on food insecurity among Nottinghamshire residents.

Roda Madziva also presented from this cohort on her collaboration with African Women Empowerment Forum on running Grandma’s Kitchen: A Community Cooking Project with Refugee Families in Nottinghamshire as well as Aishah Nasir who presented their research on running STEM learning sessions.

Our IAP leads

This year, our programmes have been led by Maria Richards, Head of Public Engagement and lead for this year’s CICP cohort and Tiffany Trundell, Programme and Project Manager for Policy and lead for the PIPP and PIAP cohort.

Working with our cohort this year has been a fantastic experience that has really demonstrated the breadth and reach of our research and the difference that it can make at all levels of society across the world and what it means to the communities that it impacts.

What has most inspired me when working with the civic cohort is their desire to make positive change by challenging perceptions. Each project has been routed in partnership working and celebrating the knowledge all parties contribute.