Policy Leeds May signpost
Local knowledge needs are revealed, several policy-relevant research networks launch, and a report on children’s mental health demands immediate action — find this and more in our May signpost.
Leeds City Council launch their refreshed ‘Areas of Research Interest (ARI)’
Over 215 colleagues from Leeds City Council and across the University came together at an information session in April to discuss the Council’s recently refreshed Areas of Research Interest (ARI). Updated in 2024, the new ARI outline the council’s knowledge needs and provide a starting point for potential collaborations between academics and the local authority. Read the new Leeds City Council ARI.
In a new blog, Dr Abi Rowson (Horizons Institute, University of Leeds) reflects on her experience supporting development of the refreshed ARIs whilst on secondment with Leeds City Council. Read Dr Abi Rowson’s blog ‘An invitation for civic collaboration: the team Leeds way’.
For more information about collaborating with Leeds City Council, visit our website.
Improving children’s mental health and wellbeing with and through educational settings
The third report in the ‘Child of the North’ series, produced jointly by the Child of the North research group and Centre for Young Lives, was published in April. It presents an evidence-based plan for Government to boost children’s mental health through the education system.
The research finds that in 2022, 18% of children aged 7-to-16-years-old and 22% of young people aged 17-to-24 had a probable mental health condition. This finding is exacerbated by chronic waiting lists and a ‘postcode lottery of provision’ that has left more than 32,000 children waiting over two years for help (in 2022/3). This crisis has a profound impact on children and young people’s life chances as well as the wellbeing of wider society. The report suggests some practice measures to address these challenges, recommending that support should be available from an early age.
Read the Child of the North mental health report.
The Centre for Applied Education Research will host an accompanying webinar on 8 May, 4–5pm, that will delve further into the report, its findings and recommendations. Register for the mental health report webinar.
Leeds hosts the CASCADE network inception meeting
Last month, the University hosted the Conservation and Sustainability Consortium of Academic Institutions (CASCADE) inception meeting at Cloth Hall Court.
Discussion over two days looked at how UK expertise in conservation and biodiversity could feed into and support the goals of the Convention of Biological Diversity’s Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. The meeting brought together delegates from across the UK higher education sector, other research institutions, government agencies, NGOs and industry groups.
Presentations, roundtables, workshops and a spot of yoga left attendees enthused and eager to promote their subject expertise through advanced approaches to knowledge exchange.
The event was accompanied by a live X (formerly Twitter) feed, which can be viewed on the CASCADE X account.
Visit the CASCADE website to learn more about the network.
Upcoming events
Legacy of My Leeds 2023: what’s next for community cultural practice?
10 May, 6pm-7:30pm, Stage@Leeds
Join Alex De Little (Horizons Institute) to reflect on the impact of community participation during ‘Leeds 2023’ and consider what’s next for culture in the city and region. This event forms part of Alex’s research into the year of culture for the Centre for Cultural Value. Book your place at Legacy of My Leeds 2023. Read more about Alex’s project Co-producing the legacy of My Leeds 2023.
Can Artificial Intelligence (AI) save the world and everything in it? (spoiler alert: probably not!)
22 May, 12–12:40pm, online
Professor Nik Watson (School of Environment) will host the Global Food and Environment Institute’s (GFEI) May webinar. The session aims to demystify AI, delineating its capabilities and limitations with a focus on AI’s role in the future of food production and consumption. Find more information and register for the GFEI webinar.
UPEN annual conference 2024
21 May, 10:15am-16:15pm, University of York
The Universities Policy Engagement Network (UPEN) are hosting their annual conference at the University of York this May. This year’s event focuses on ‘Connecting and Collaborating across the UK Academic-Policy Landscape’.
Juliet Jopson (Policy Leeds) will join as a panellist for the “Place-Based Policymaking” session and co-facilitate a roundtable discussion on Areas of Research Interest (ARI) with Dr Abi Rowson (Horizons Institute). These sessions draw on their experiences of developing ARI with Leeds City Council.
Whilst this event is currently sold-out, you can join the waitlist and or sign-up for side events via the UPEN conference website.
UPEN conference side-events
- Diversifying and democratising knowledges in academic-policy engagement, May 9, 10–4pm, online.
- Strengthening and sustaining arts and humanities evidence use in the UK, May 13, 12.30–3pm, online.
- History under fire: The uses and abuses of historical evidence in conflict situations, May 13, 2–3pm, online.
- Academic-policy engagement and the future of devolution, 9 July, 9.30am-4pm, Leeds Beckett University.
News in brief
The Early Years Employment Hub
Leeds University Business School (LUBS) have launched their Early Years Employment Hub (EYE). The EYE hub is a consortium of policymakers, providers, professional associations and researchers dedicated to delivering evidence-based policy change for the early years workforce. They aim to understand the interventions the sector requires to support workforce retention and development. The group was established in response to the ‘Retention and return: delivering the expansion of early years entitlement in England’ report. Join the EYE hub network.
UK Food Safety Research Network
A UK Food Safety Research Network project, led by Dr Gülbanu Kaptan at Leeds University Business School, is working to extend research that finds many risky kitchen behaviours are commonly performed in UK homes. The new project sets out to better understand consumer food safety behaviour and develop ways to change it to improve food safety. Learn more about the UK food safety research network.
Policing and community resilience in the context of climate change
New project led by Dr Ali Malik (School of Law) has been funded through the Vulnerability and Policing Futures Research Centre. The project will investigate policing and community resilience in the context of climate change, examining how the police and local resilience forums understand, prepare for, and respond to climate vulnerability. Dr Malik will partner with the College of Policing, HMICS and the Police Foundation to undertake this work. Read more about the project: Policing and community resilience in the context of climate change.
Research papers, articles, blogs and podcasts
- A just transition or just a transition? A recently published research paper from colleagues at the Institute for Transport Studies investigates how fairness plays a role in planning the decarbonisation of transport systems. Their analysis finds that “no place has yet found a full answer for how to truly embed fairness concerns at the heart of transport planning”. Read ‘A just transition or just a transition? The understanding and relevance of fairness in planning for a decarbonised transport system’ in Energy Research & Social Science, open access.
- Creativity unlocked? Research conducted by David Lee (School of Media and Communication) informs a new policy brief with The York Policy Engine and XR Stories. His work investigates the impact of the pandemic on video and TV work in Yorkshire. Read ‘Creativity unlocked?’ (PDF) or learn more about David’s research into the pandemics impact on Video Games and Television Work in Yorkshire.
- The UK is poorer without Erasmus. Sascha Stollhans (School of Languages, Cultures and Societies) recommends that the UK rejoins the Erasmus+ programme to address the decline in language learning, intercultural education and international mobility. Read the ‘the UK is poorer without Erasmus’ in the Conversation.
- Can degrowth affect climate change? Paul Brockway (Faculty of Environment) and colleagues used integrated assessment models to project Australia’s future under a degrowth plan. They explored 51 degrowth and no-growth scenarios to discover their effects on climate change. Learn more about the research study on the Environment Faculty website or read the open access research paper ‘Downscaling down under: towards degrowth in integrated assessment models’ in Economics Systems Research.
- Digitising transport: the rise in Mobility as a Service. Kate Pangbourne (Institute for Transport Studies) talks to the IMechE podcast on the UK Government’s introduction of a code of practice for ‘Mobility as a Service (MaaS)’. She discusses how effective such a system could be in the UK. Listen to the IMechE podcast.
- What role can arts and culture play in placemaking? Read this digest of 126 studies by John Wright, Ava Podgorski, and Kyla Tully at the Centre for Cultural Value.
- ‘I might as well stop and diversify into holiday lets’ — the reality of farming after Brexit. Peter Gittins (LUBS) co-authors a new article that reveals the impact of Brexit on UK farming and the challenges it poses for achieving net-zero goals. Read The Conversation article.
- The most significant cyber threat facing the UK. Professor David Wall’s (School of Law) research is cited in a Parliament report on ransomware. Read the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy ransomware report: ‘A hostage to fortune: ransomware and UK national security’.
Find more information on policy collaborations from across University of Leeds on the Policy Leeds website. If you would like to keep in touch with our work between signposts, please connect with us on LinkedIn, find us on X (formerly Twitter), or you can email us at policyleeds@leeds.ac.uk
