Research
The Faculty's research mission is to deliver research that is relevant to the whole community and that will impact on the educational, social and cultural development of the Faculty, the University, the city, the region and beyond.
To achieve this, we need to balance three objectives:
- To contribute to the knowledge bases of our cognate areas, especially through publications and influence. In the short term this will be focussed on REF2014 but our contribution is much wider and longer term than this;
- To ensure that our research meets the needs of the professions and the public and commercial sectors;
- To exploit every opportunity to use our research to contribute to the Faculty’s teaching and student experience.
Alongside these, we have a mission to develop new researchers to help achieve these objectives, both through providing and facilitating opportunities and the professional development of our academic staff, and through our work with post graduate students through PhD and Professional Doctorate study.
The Faculty’s research strength lies in the three research units:
- Centre for Children, Young People and Families;
- Centre for Pedagogy
- Cultural and Regional Studies Beacon
and through the work of colleagues within the Faculty beyond these units.
Research comes together through the leadership of the Faculty’s Professoriate and Readership and is managed through the Faculty’s Departments. The Faculty’s overarching aims of
- Informing and influencing policy and practice, and government bodies at national, regional and local level; and
- Making a real difference to the culture and practice of the region and beyond
are delivered in different ways according to the characteristics of each Departments’ work.
The Faculty strategy provides a resource and infrastructure framework which will support the Departments, the centres and the beacon to:
- Allow our research to impact directly through publication, dissemination and external engagement, and indirectly through its contribution to curriculum development, teaching and professional provision;
- Support wider staff engagement in research and maintain quality in our postgraduate student community;
- Build our capacity to improve our performance in future; and
- Improve financial sustainability.
