Explore GLAM’s public and community engagement with research

Keep on reading to be inspired by opportunities for public and community engagement with research (PCER) activities which are as diverse as GLAM's world-leading collections.

Below are links to PCER taking place in the six GLAM institutions, as well as video case studies, links to REF 2021 case studies, and information about the participatory research taking place in GLAM.

To find out more or to work with us on public and community engagement with research activity, get in touch via the contact list on GLAM's main PCER webpage.

 

Video case studies

https://www.youtube.com/embed/t9kfhpdQKCQ

The Decolonisation and the Anti-Imperial Materialities Project, Pitt Rivers Museum

Bacterial World, Oxford University Museum of Natural History

Dimensions: The Mathematics of Symmetry and Space, Ashmolean Museum

Picturing Parkinson's, Ashmolean Museum

 

REF 2021 impact case studies

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the UK's system for assessing the excellence of research in UK higher education providers (HEIs). In the REF 2021, impact is defined as an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia. Each HEI submitted a selection of impact case studies for assessment in the REF. An impact case study is a five-page document, describing the impact of research undertaken within the submitting unit. It also contains information about the research that underpins the impact that took place.

Click on the links below to read the REF 2021 impact case studies which were led by GLAM or for which GLAM institutions were contributors, as well as the Oxford University Unit of Assessment/Department to which it was submitted.

Participatory research

Research England has given Participatory Research Funding (PRF) to Oxford University since 2021.

The Participatory Research Fund (PRF) aims to strengthen research outcomes by supporting projects in which researchers and non-academic partners work together to co-create knowledge, whilst sharing power and responsibility. Partners can include organisations, creative practitioners, and communities of interest, identity and/or place.

Research England’s definition of participatory research:

Participatory or co-produced research strengthens research outcomes by involving the communities and users of research, better recognising their experience, needs and preferences, and giving greater agency to communities to implement findings.

In GLAM, the PRF has been used to support:

  1. Projects that use innovative models and methodologies for participatory research. These could include a) pilot projects that test participatory approaches, b) projects that build upon an existing participatory project;
  2. Public engagement with research activities that use a participatory methodology and/or are related to participatory research.

Expand All

  • Global Health Multaka-Oxford Participatory Research - working with migrants and asylum seekers to create digital outputs for the History of Science Museum's online collections database
  • Water and Wildlife Activity Day at Oxford Botanic Garden (Museum of Natural History)
  • Creative collaborative engagement with hidden queer histories in Pitt Rivers Museum archive: film screenings + discussions of 'Seasons of Longing'
  • Afrika Taruwa (pilot): workshop + public event (The Gathering Place) for UK-based Nigerian creatives to engage with the Pitt Rivers Museum's West African collections. Taruwa at the Pitt Rivers Museum [YouTube]

  • Focus group to give insight as to how the volunteers of Multaka-Oxford were engaging with the project, what they found beneficial, and what they would like to be improved (Pitt Rivers Museum /  History of Science Museum)
  • MistleGO! Citizen Science mistletoe project (Oxford Botanic Garden & Arboretum)
  • Our Water Future, a pop-up exhibition resulting from a collaboration between OUMNH and REACH, related to Fair Water? exhibition (Museum of Natural History)
  • Participatory element of the Taking Care project (Pitt Rivers Museum)
  • Participatory workshop on ‘Troubling Standards: a social history of measuring in South Asia’ for South Asian diaspora community members in collaboration with Birmingham Museums Trust (History of Science Museum)

  • Collaborative pilot project with Botanic Gardens Conservation International trying to get people to lower the carbon footprint of their weekly food intake (Oxford Botanic Garden & Arboretum)
  • Collaborative research and storytelling around the objects at the Pitt Rivers Museum highlighting Chinese Zodiac Animals through toys, children’s clothing and folk art (Pitt Rivers Museum)
  • The Decolonisation and the Anti-Imperial Materialities Project (Pitt Rivers Museum)
  • Public engagement with research weekend at the Oxford City Farm as part of the AHRC-NERC funded Activating the Archive project (Pitt Rivers Museum)
  • Extension of Radical Hope, Critical Change programme (Pitt Rivers Museum)