People development
Engaged Research Team
The Engaged Research Microsoft Team is a place to bring together everyone who is involved in or interested in engagement with research.
- to be the go-to place for all things related to Engagement with Research
- to bring like-minded people together to build a community including academics, researchers, and professional staff
- to provide support and resources in one place you can come back to
- to bring people together across the University to maximise synergies around engagement with research (Public Engagement, Policy Engagement, Patient Involvement, and Third Sector Engagement)
- to promote funding and engagement opportunities to researchers across the institution
- to provide regular networking and events and highlight training opportunities related to engagement
To join the team, open Microsoft Teams and select ‘Join or create a team’. When prompted, enter the code fc84jre. An administrator will then approve your request – all are welcome!
Pepnet meetings
Pepnet meetings are regular forums/sessions for sharing best practice on all things related to engagement with research. These meetings are currently advertised and held virtually through the Engaged Research Microsoft Team (see joining details above).
The next pepnet meeting will be in 2022-23.
Engagement Excellence Scheme (EES)
About the EES
The Engagement Excellence Scheme aims to build researchers’ skills, knowledge, confidence and leadership skills to undertake public engagement activities, and to create a network of research engagement champions across the University. The scheme is open to staff members from all faculties.
New for 2021-22, the scheme will also offer a policy engagement track.
The successful public engagement track (including patient involvement) continues from previous years, supported by the Public Engagement team.
The new policy engagement track will be supported by Policy Leeds and Leeds Social Sciences Institute (LSSI). The policy track will follow the same structure as the public engagement track, but with the training tailored for policy engagement.
The course is a mix of nine project planning sessions and training sessions held across the academic year, each lasting for about for two hours. Project planning sessions will allow Fellows to receive individualised guidance from the mentors and course leaders and feedback from peers to help them develop their activities. Training sessions will be aligned to the needs of Fellows.
Fellows use public or policy engagement to increase the impact of a project in their group, institute or school and can develop their skills to become a champion for engagement. Most continue and become members of the EES+ network, which brings together Fellows and Champions of Engagement.
Read reflections from previous Fellows (PE).
EES applications open in July each year. Successful applicants will take part in regular EES sessions from October – June. Upon completion of the programme and submission of a project report, Fellows will graduate in a ceremony held in the September.
PE-related training
The Engaged Research Microsoft Team is home to a comprehensive and up to date list of training opportunities (internal and external) and resources for staff.
Feel free to approach us for bespoke workshops on PE, e.g. for research away-days.
The Public Engagement with Research Awards
The Public Engagement with Research Awards aimed to recognise people for excellent public engagement or patient and public involvement and engagement, and to raise awareness of innovative high-quality practice. They were run four times between 2016 and 2021.
2021 winners, 2018 winners, 2017 winners, 2016 winners
Since 2022 we have the Engaged for Impact awards, which are inclusive of different stakeholders (not only public and patients).
EES+ Network
The EES+ Network is the home for former Engagement Fellows and Engagement Champions. Champions are members of staff who demonstrate support for public engagement in their work roles and/or practice public engagement of a high quality.
They champion public engagement and play an active part in enhancing the spread and adoption of engagement practices in their school/institute/service.
They can act as a more local contact for a colleague who prefers to talk to someone from their school or faculty.
The network operates on a membership system and if you would like to join, contact the PE team.
PE in promotion criteria
PE and outreach activities can be used as part of the academic promotion process (either under the academic leadership, research and innovation route or student education route). See the HR pages for further information.
Introduced in 2016, 35% of all successful academic promotion applications are using the optional PE criterion. This is equally distributed across all grades (Grade 8 to 10).
Symplectic: Recording PE activity as part of your impact profile
Within Symplectic (https://publications.leeds.ac.uk) you can now also record PE activity under the professional activities tab.
This allows you to record your activity on an ongoing basis and can form a useful repository for your academic review, promotion application, and also REF case studies.
Please note that this system is now the University’s way to collect data to fulfil its obligation for part of the HESA-HE-BCI return.