Vicki Crossley-Gaunt

As a non-traditional research office, we have been heavily involved in dissemination activity and, increasingly, rather than just academic staff who are already interested in the outcome of research projects, this means attempting to engage, involve and inspire the public. Public engagement involves a range of approaches that universities or research institutes can take to involve the public with their work. An important part of any public engagement work is to think about the people you want to engage with – but who are the public and how can you ensure that you identify and engage with them effectively? Whoever you are interested in disseminating your research findings to we will consider ways to ensure your planned activity is appropriate and relevant to the target audience so they can effectively contribute to your research. The workshop will help you to identify your audience and, using new technology to track, monitor and evaluate events, to engage with them to further disseminate and promote research. This interactive workshop will involve working in groups using a range of craft materials to create a mood board to demonstrate how you would identify and engage with your audience to maximise participation for your event.

In light of today’s competitive economy, flexibility has become increasingly important to our research and enterprise activity and we needed to be able to respond to peaks and troughs in demand. As our current permanent academic staffing base did not have the capacity to provide support to research activity, and to avoid lengthy recruitment processes when research funding is granted and immediate start-up of projects is required, we established a Research Pool (RP) to maintain a consistent resource of research assistance so that we could be reactive to the research and consultancy opportunities that were available to us. The RP has been in place since March 2012, successfully providing support to over 50 projects with a total of 7500 hours worked. They work alongside academic researchers to deliver support to a variety of client groups; analysing data, interpreting results, performing and transcribing individual and focus group interviews, literature reviews, data collection, design of databases and providing general research assistant support to projects. The RP can be drawn on for quick/short-term and long-term input to projects. This poster outlines how the RP was established and how it has provided essential support over a three year period. Key messages: How: To establish a Research Pool; A Research Pool operates; The Research Pool contributes to research activity.