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Externally funded projects

Our academics and researchers contribute to a range of externally funded projects.

Our dedicated research team is made up of world-leading academics. They make an impact on businesses, policies and societies.

You can browse this selection of current projects some of our academics are involved with:

Beyond the 10,000 Steps

Full title:

Beyond the 10,000 Steps: Managing Less Visible Aspects of Healthy Ageing at Work

Project team:

Sponsors:

  • UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)

About the project:

Beyond 10,000 Steps will work with employers and older workers to understand ways in which health needs can be addressed to enable productive later-life employment.

Find out more.

KTP: Contemporary Art Commissioning Capability in a Heritage Setting

Full title: 

KTP to develop a contemporary art commissioning capability in a heritage setting to enable an innovation step change in heritage interpretation for visitor diversity and reach.

Project team:

Sponsors:

  • Innovate UK

  • Vindolanda Trust

About the project:

To improve the understanding of audience needs and to create innovative cross-sectoral marketing strategies, in order to develop and sustain new income streams via a step change in heritage interpretation.

Creative Fuse North East

Project team:

View the full project team.

Sponsors:

  • IERDF

  • AHRC

About the project:

Creative Fuse North East brings together expertise from the region’s five universities to support the vibrant, dynamic, and fast-growing Creative, Digital and IT (CDIT) sector.

With AHRC and European Regional Development Funding, specialists from the universities will work with industry, cultural organisations, creative practitioners and freelancers, social enterprises, and the public sector, to identify how CDIT firms complement and add value to each other; sharing best practice and encouraging innovative ways of working.

This will help to ensure that the creative and digital economy becomes more resilient and grows faster, whilst helping to create more and better jobs for the region. The creative and digital economy is recognised as having a transformative impact on the region’s broader economy and employment base, catalysing and contributing to the value and importance of innovation.

Visit the project website.

Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre

Project team:

Led by NESTA. 

View the full project team.

Sponsors:

  • UKRI
  • Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund
  • AHRC 

About the project:

We provide independent research and policy recommendations for the UK's creative industries.

We consult industry about the challenges that the sector faces, from its limited diversity, to skills gaps, barriers to trade, and local growth in the sector. We put these questions to our UK-wide group of researchers, and feed the evidence and policy advice back to policymakers. This unique model ensures that our research and policy recommendations are relevant, and meet the needs and priorities of the people working in the sector.

Visit the project website.

Engineering Futures

Project team:

Sponsors:

  • Alex Ferry Foundation - a charitable foundation which aims to improve the lives of people working in the manufacturing, engineering and shipbuilding industries.

About the project:

This research aims to examine the future of work (FoW) and worker representation, including key implications for the manufacturing and engineering sectors. Stage 1 scoping work undertaken during 2021-22 explored strategic perspectives on the FoW, through semi-structured interviews with trade union and employer organisation representatives (n=15). Stage 2 is planned for 2022-23 and aims to understand how key identified issues are playing out in the workplace, with a focus on employee perspectives and participation. A case study approach is being used to create an in-depth understanding of the implementation of specific new technologies, AI-powered management approaches, workplace data agreements and workforce skills transition planning. The findings will be used to consider implications for the role of trade unions and worker voice more broadly in the future of work.

View the research findings: Engineering Futures - Stage 1 Findings Report (0.7 MB)

Environmental Friendliness and Product Design

Project team:

Sponsors:

  • British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants

About the project

This research intends to test how product glossiness can influence consumers’ perceptions and decisions related to environmental friendliness. Using experimental designs, this research aims to show that consumers judge products with a glossy, rather than matte exterior design as being less environmentally friendly. This effect is expected to be driven by the belief that glossier products are more processed and less natural.

In addition, due to the lower perceived environmental friendliness of glossy (vs. matte) products, consumers are expected to have higher recycling intention and the likelihood of glossy rather than matte products. This research will contribute to our understanding of the vital role played by product glossiness in changing consumers’ perceptions and reactions to environmental protection.

The findings are expected to bring broad implications for marketers to communicate their environmentally friendly positioning to consumers and for policy marketers to promote recycling and environmental protection actions by consumers.

FairWater

Project team:

Sponsors: 

  • OFWAT

About the project:

Water services and water use in the home need to change to address water scarcity and climate heating, while ensuring affordability and protecting public health. However, many proposed innovations come at a cost and/or involve disruption to customers, their homes or habits. Many people will find it hard to change. In order to address this, the FairWater project aims to uncover the optimum ‘pathways’ to water sustainability for customers and their homes.

The project, led by Northumbrian Water Limited (NWL), brings together a high-calibre consortium, including Northern Gas Networks (NGN), Procter & Gamble (P&G), Newcastle University (NU) and National Energy Action (NEA). The team will collaborate to develop, test and demonstrate more sustainable water solutions that can be applied in existing homes, and that will be accepted by customers (including low-income, elderly and vulnerable).

A key focus will be to help customers transition at a task level (e.g. laundry, dishwashing, personal hygiene) using a combination of behavioural change approaches and product/service innovations. Solutions will be assessed in a unique test-bed site that contains a range of different types of houses. We will extend testing and assessment to include a wide range of customers and their own homes. With permission, in-home sensors will be fitted and the team will develop advanced software tools to collect data and let other customers visualise potential solutions. We will consider water services within a wider context of energy and digital services in the home, to provide the best overall solution for customers.

Living Deltas Hub

Project team:

View the full team.

Sponsors: 

  • Global Challenges Research Fund

About the project:

Over 500 million people globally are living in delta regions. Deltas are integral to global food supplies, fish stocks, water supply, industry, trade and culture. Deltas are under threat from climate change, rising sea levels, industrial farming techniques and pollutants. We need to act now to prevent the delta systems from collapsing.

The Living Deltas Hub will co-develop transdisciplinary frameworks needed to understand delta Socio Economic Systems (SESs). It will work with delta-dwellers and policymakers to develop solutions to help realise the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in delta contexts.

The Hub comprises six innovative work packages co-developed with Global South partners and research institutes addressing specific in-country and delta-scale needs. NUBS contributes to work package 2: “Delta system characterisation and risk assessment”. 

Visit the project website.

National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise (NICRE)

Project team:

Sponsors:

  • Research England

About the project:

Set up in September 2020, NICRE is a unique hub of innovation and research excellence working with a network of partners to find new ways of unlocking potential and supporting thriving rural businesses and communities. NICRE puts knowledge to work for an enterprising countryside combining research with practical innovation to find new ways of unlocking potential and supporting thriving rural businesses and communities.

They work with a variety of stakeholders to find new ways of unlocking potential and supporting thriving rural businesses and communities. From community groups to business support organisations, local enterprise agencies to all layers of government, NICRE liaises with a range of bodies to help address the challenges faced by rural enterprise and identify new opportunities.

Visit the NICRE website.

Parents and Carers Networks

Full title: 

Parents and Carers Networks: A critical community engaged scholarship investigation into organising for solidarity, self-interest, and social justice.

Project team:

Sponsors:

  • British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants

About the project:

While the ‘ideal worker’(Acker, 2006; Thébaud & Pedulla, 2016) is unencumbered by caring responsibilities, in reality, 1 in 7 workers in the UK provide regular care for dependents (Carers UK, 2021).

This project contributes to the policy debate about parental leave, flexible working and how to support mothers, fathers and carers in the workplace. It does so by engaging in critical community research within a particular setting, Higher Education.

It will investigate the development and role of Parents and Carers Networks in Higher Education Institutions, as they seek to affect individual, organisational, and policy level outcomes. We propose a critical community-engaged scholarship approach (Gordon da Cruz, 2017), adopting an insider/outsider stance (Bartunek & Louis, 1996). We will be drawing on and advancing Mobilisation Theory (Kelly 1997, Lopes & Hall, 2015), contributing to the field of Employment Relations.

The Social Cost of Road Crashes

Project team:

Sponsor:

  • Australian National University
Postgraduate research students
Postgraduate research degrees