3rd June 2025
Political disengagement is rising in the UK, with declining turnout, eroding trust, and growing polarisation. Some groups, particularly young people and the economically disadvantaged, are especially disengaged. Join us for this online event, to get some practical insights into methods of engaging the disengaged in making change in politics, democracy and civil society, specifically aimed at policy makers and campaigning organisations. Find out about our FREE toolkit and how you can use it.
23rd May 2025
In this presentation Margaret Ebubedik, Research Fellow in Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS), will draw on her body of work to share insights into her Stakeholder Knowledge Exchange, Engagement, and Partnerships (SKEEP) approach, which she has applied across diverse humanitarian, peacebuilding, and development contexts.
This event is part of the Thinking Expansively Seminar Series (TESS).
16th May 2025
This roundtable will showcase current research from across the OU focused on engaging disengaged citizens across various contexts.
25th April 2025
Part of the Thinking Expansively Seminar Series (TESS), this talk welcomes Dr Adom Philogene Heron (Lecturer in Visual Anthropology at the University of Bristol)
From 2019-2023 Adom successfully spearheaded the GCRF Surviving Storms project, digitally mapping hurricane survivals in Dominica. This paper tells a story of a community self help project by villagers displaced from their homes in the aftermath of fatal landslides brought by Tropical Storm Erika in 2015.
11th April 2025
In this seminar we will introduce the developing work of Existential Dis/Connections. The seminar will offer tasters for making connections from a number of different starting points, opening up conversations and encouraging new spaces that can accommodate discomfort, uncertainty and new possibilities.
4th April 2025
Join us for a talk by Rajiv Prabhakar, Senior Lecturer in Personal Finance. Rajiv will be drawing on his experience of engaging with the UK Parliament to the ways that researchers might engage with policy makers more generally to crate impacts.
24th March 2025
Hosted by the Centre for Global Challenges and Social Justice (GCSJ), join us for a book presentation and discussion with the writers, editors and organisers of the new edited volume.
21st March 2025
This event is part of the Thinking Expansively Seminar Series (TESS) and will explore Blackness, futurity, and geographies, drawing on Christina Sharpe's concept of "the wake." It examines how dreams and joy within Blackness inform new visions of the future, using Caribbean literature and film to reimagine Black futures. Through works like Erna Brodber's One Bubby Susan and Jaz Morrison’s films, the talk challenges traditional ideas of time and Black experience.
18th March 2025
This talk explores the troubling history of the entanglements between Britain and Jamaica, through the establishment of a slave society from the late seventeenth century, the time of abolition and emancipation, and moments of crisis in 1865 and 1938. It will argue that there are colonial wrongs to be righted: there is a debt. Who carries responsibility? What would recognition mean? How might we think about repair?
14th March 2025
Drawing on documentary analysis and stakeholder interviews, the talk offers a critical, comparative analysis of how colonial pasts have influenced social protection policies and institutions in Mainland Tanzania and Cote d’Ivoire, to what extent the current dynamics of policymaking enable alignment with national social protection priorities, and how domestic leadership in social protection arrangements could be strengthened.
