RSF: Community engagement

The Research Support Funding scheme supported 13 short (six-month) projects that complemented and extended the Centre’s research themes: Transforming Institutions, Transforming Engagement, Transforming Health across the life course and Transforming Relations.

Evaluating the nuances of community engagement

Universities are increasingly engaging with their communities to help enrich their research and help make their cities and regions healthier, culturally richer and more interesting places to live and work. However, measuring the effectiveness of community engagement is challenging, and it is difficult for researchers to determine, for example, whether they are reaching the people they want to reach, or whether everyone is given equal opportunity to be heard.

This project aimed to identify key markers of successful engagement, and consider how new measures could be designed to help researchers measure their community engagement activities and help them adapt engagement approaches for different contexts.