We are delighted to announce that William Allen (a Fellow by Examination in Political and Development Studies at Magdalen College, as well as a Researcher at the Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society (COMPAS)), has been selected as one of the 2019-20 cohort of Public Engagement with Research (PER) Leaders. The PER Leadership scheme is for academics to take on a leadership role in a culture change project for their departments and faculties to enhance support for PER. The scheme is targeted at those who have a strong interest in PER, who want the opportunity to demonstrate their leadership skills within an academic environment and to explore new ways of working through facilitating change. The seven winners will each receive £5,000 to initiate PER-focused initiatives within their departments, and will participate in training from a variety of internal and external PER and leadership professionals throughout the year.
Will has told us: 'Being named as one of the university’s Public Engagement with Research (PER) Leaders for 2019-20 means a lot to me, both academically and personally. The scheme will enable me to work with colleagues across the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography to foster greater awareness of, and excitement for, publicly engaged research. It will also provide opportunities for me to learn from the other PER Leaders about successful engagement activities from departments across the university that might be very different to Anthropology in terms of field, but nevertheless face common questions and challenges. My own research at the Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society (COMPAS) looks at the ways that information (including research evidence and quantitative data) relates to what people think about immigration. Therefore, public engagement—both as an activity and as a topic of research—is at the heart of what I do as a social scientist.'
More information on the scheme is available here.
