Search these pages to explore a selection of our directory of activities. You can use the keyword search and filter buttons to discover how we are addressing each of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals and the five priorities in our Social Responsibility and Civic Engagement Plan. You can also filter activities by location and function.
100% of our electricity consumption is backed with REGO (‘Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin’) certification. This means that for every megawatt (or 1,000kWh) of electricity the University consumes, the equivalent volume of electricity is generated from renewable sources. We encourage our staff, students and our local community to make a similar move to renewable energy suppliers!
Examples of our civic partnerships include: We also prioritise global partnerships to advance our work towards the SDGs. These include:
We signed the international SDG Accord as part of our ongoing commitment to social responsibility and environmental sustainability. Our Alliance Manchester Business School also signed the Principles for Responsible Management in Education (PRME). We are a founding member of the UK’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).
Policy@Manchester is our University’s sector-leading policy engagement institute. It connects researchers with policymakers and influencers, nurturing long-term policy engagement partnerships and impact.
We partner with a range of organisations to carry out meaningful public engagement with diverse audiences and share ideas and research as well as inspiring informed discussion, debate and creativity. Examples include:
We partner with small local charities in Manchester right through to major government departments through our Q-Step programme. This places students on internships in organisations that require data skills and analysis and we’ve collaborated on projects with the Office for National Statistics on global, national and regional datasets used to measure progress on SDGs.
We’re committed to empowering students with the knowledge, skills and opportunities to address all of the SDGs through partnerships with public, private and civil society organisations. Our University Living Lab platform connects student projects with external organisations to address the SDGs. Our Volunteer Hub acts to advance partnerships between hundreds of charities and our student volunteers. And many academic programmes offer service-learning partnerships, where external organisations benefit from practical student interventions in areas such as dentistry, optometry, pharmacy, business and legal advice.
We have a duty to conduct our affairs in a responsible and transparent way. The Board of Governors is our governing body, carrying ultimate responsibility for our overall strategic direction and for the management of our finances, property and affairs generally, including the employment arrangements for all staff. Its membership of 23 has a majority of persons who aren’t employed by the University, known as lay members and its Chair is appointed by the Board from within the lay category of the membership. Members of our Senate, support staff and student representatives are also elected to serve on the Board. The General Assembly is a much larger body than the Board of Governors. In common with the Board, it has a majority of lay members. Lay members are drawn from a wide range of local, regional and national interests, and together they offer the University a wealth of experience and expertise from differing perspectives and backgrounds.
Our Anti-Corruption and Bribery Policy takes a zero-tolerance approach to bribery and corruption in all of our University operations. Our Academic Freedom Policy and Code of Practice on Freedom of Speech ensures staff can put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions without placing themselves at risk of losing their jobs or any privileges. Our Policy for Socially Responsible Investment pursues an ethical investment approach. We’ve also signed up to the UN-supported Principles for Responsible Investment.
Our Justice Hub allows students to explore and apply various arms of the law to make real change in our communities. The Hub runs a free legal advice centre for economically disadvantaged people in areas such as family, housing and immigration law. During the pandemic, our Justice Hub set up the Virtual Vacation Scheme, which aimed to simplify some very complicated areas of law impacted by the pandemic, and created an accessible and informative method of legal help for the community through workshops, videos, briefings and webinars.
In Place of War (IPOW) is a global spin-out charity from research in our School of Music and Drama. IPOW works with grassroots organisations in refugee camps, war-affected villages, towns under curfew, cities under occupation, and refugee communities, using creativity in places of conflict as a proven tool for positive change. IPOW enables communities and grassroots change-makers in music, theatre and across the arts to transform a culture of violence and suffering into hope, opportunity and freedom.
As part of our Justice Hub, The Manchester Innocence Project (MIP) is one of only 13 organisations outside of the US to join the Innocence Network. Law students volunteering with MIP have the opportunity to take on live criminal appeals for those who maintain their innocence.
Our criminology researchers have linked up with leading research and technology development company, Trilateral Research, to collaborate on Project Honeycomb. This develops relationships with organisations across the private, public and civil society sectors, and supports them to record information related to modern slavery, human trafficking and exploitation. Building on these insights, Honeycomb runs a series of campaigns and helps the city intelligently and creatively protect people from the crimes of human trafficking and modern slavery as well as interrupting traffickers’ activities.
The Firs is located on the University’s Fallowfield campus and houses a suite of facilities for environmental research, monitoring and engagement. Our UNESCO World Heritage site, Jodrell Bank, is another area rich in biodiversity. To help promote biodiversity on campus, we’ve developed: We’ve also transformed a former road into Brunswick Park – a pocket park to enhance green space and wellbeing on campus.
The Whitworth created the UK’s first dedicated post of Cultural Park Keeper. This has led to the creation of a Natural and Cultural Health Service programme of outdoor activities to raise awareness, educate and inspire our diverse visitors to connect with and protect life in our park. At Jodrell Bank we work with community and voluntary groups, including the RSPB and the Cheshire Beekeepers Association, to protect and enhance our natural environment.
A renowned engagement expert from our School of Environment, Education and Development is using her Ketso Connect community and stakeholder engagement toolkit to help the government’s Natural England advisers launch their National Recovery Network. This network aims to restore 75% of protected sites and to create or restore 500,000 hectares of additional wildlife-rich habitat.
Our Manchester Museum Vivarium is dedicated to the conservation of reptiles and amphibians. We recently partnered with Panama Wildlife Charity PWCC on non-invasive research and conservation education involving local communities in the Santa Fe National Park in Panama. This led to a world first in 2021: one of the world’s rarest toads, the Harlequin Frog, was successfully bred in captivity outside its country of origin, at our museum. We also curate a world-famous FrogBlog and deliver a digital Learning with Lucy conservation programme for schools.
As part of our partnership with the local NGO, Manchester City of Trees, students can use our Volunteer Hub to sign up for one-off or weekly tree planting sessions or even become a Citizen Forester. Our student volunteering is supporting their mission of planting one tree for every person across Greater Manchester.
All undergraduates can take our University College for Interdisciplinary Learning unit Crisis of Nature: Issues in Environmental History. Biosciences students can take part in the Manchester-based Urban Biodiversity field course, which introduces them to environmental consultancy, conservation and natural site management. Environmental Management undergraduates also gain skills needed for ecological surveys, conservation management and environmental auditing.
Deforestation is the second leading cause of climate change after fossil fuels, accounting for almost a fifth of planet-warming emissions. Our researchers led an international and interdisciplinary team of ecologists, economists and political scientists in the largest ever study of community forestry. Studying 18,000 community-led forest initiatives in Nepal we found that community-forest management led to a 37% relative reduction in deforestation and a 4.3% relative reduction in poverty.
Researchers in our Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences have examined degraded soils of grasslands in Kenya and China to understand the role of soil biodiversity in creating and supporting healthy ecosystems. We’ve scaled up novel approaches to harness ecological connections between native soil microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, algae) and native plants to accelerate recovery from degraded to healthy soil. Tools have been developed to provide accessible and practical knowledge for local communities to repair soils and public and policy awareness has been raised of the vital importance of soil biodiversity on a global scale.
All our Food on Campus outlets and catered student halls serve Marine Conservation Society approved fish.
Leading the way in achieving the University’s pledge to eliminate avoidable single-use plastic usage by 2022, staff in our School of Biological Sciences are reducing single-use plastics in the lab through adoption of a 6R approach. This has included:
We’ve implemented watershed management strategies based on location-specific diversity of aquatic species. These ensure flow rates of water run-off in our urban environment are decreased and water quality is improved, including reducing flow into our local River Medlock on campus. At our rural Jodrell Bank site, we’ve also reduced flow into our local watercourses, protecting the great crested newt – a protected species that relies on aquatic life.
At our Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre, we partnered with IncredibleOceans to deliver outreach talks and programmes to raise awareness of how oceans are facing threats from development and overfishing, climate change, pollution, acoustics and more. We teamed up with scientists, creatives, community organisations, campaigners, companies and broadcast media to maximise the impact of this educational outreach activity.
Renewable energy pledge
Social responsibility partnerships
SDG partnerships
Policy@Manchester
Public engagement partnerships
Q-Step data partnerships
Student learning partnerships
University governance
Socially responsible policies
Justice Hub
In Place of War project
Manchester Innocence Project
Project Honeycomb
Biodiversity on campus
Cultural venues and nature
Nature Recovery Network
Species conservation
Manchester City of Trees
Study programmes
Community forestry
Getting to the root of poor soil health and bringing it back to life
Food on Campus
Making labs greener
Water management
IncredibleOceans
