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.
searching subjects: Campus
Our students started a Misogyny Is Hate campaign, leading to the government directing police to record crimes motivated by a person’s sex or gender for the first time. Our Students’ Union also runs Reclaim the Night, resulting in around 2,000 women marching in the streets each year to raise awareness of sexual harassment and gender-based violence.
Gender equality is embedded across our whole curriculum, and a wide range of our degrees offer course units on gender and sexuality. For examples, Religion and Theology students assess the impact of changing gender roles on religious traditions, while our MA in Gender, Sexuality and Culture brings together scholars from many different fields to explore feminist and queer theory, sexual identities and gender history.
Our University Library is one of only five National Research Libraries in the UK. It offers reference facilities to north-west sixth-form and mature students and their teachers to help with A-level, vocational and Access course work.
Our Manchester Museum hosts and partners with ProjectInc, a Specialist College for Creative Education, to make our cultural institutions more inclusive, engaging and creative for neurodiverse young people.
Our Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health partners with Manchester Metropolitan University and Keele University on Imagine Me Stories. This is a school library diversity initiative designed to tackle under-representation in UK school libraries by curating diverse resources and promoting better representation in literature for all students.
Our Science and Engineering Education Research and Innovation Hub undertakes a range of public engagement campaigns. These include the Great Science Share for Schools and the Greater Manchester Engineering Challenge, which enhances the University’s work in broadening the pipeline of young people with an interest in STEM subjects.
We partner with the IntoUniversity Manchester North educational charity to support and engage some of the most disadvantaged young people in Manchester. IntoUniversity helps young people to attain a university place or another chosen aspiration. 71% of its students progress to university, compared with 43% of students from similar backgrounds nationally.
During the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns of 2020, our partnership with the Tutor Trust charity provided online sessions to ensure disadvantaged students didn’t suffer the risk of falling behind in their education without regular teaching in the classroom. Students from The University of Manchester make up more than half of those who work as Tutor Trust tutors in Manchester.
We offer expert-led, free MOOCs and paid continued professional development courses in a wide range of subject areas, including civil engineering, business and management, healthcare ethics and law. This includes a free Prometheus programme to support executive-level learning and development for UK third-sector professionals.
Alongside our conventional course units, we offer a range of interdisciplinary units open to all students that ensure inclusive, sustainable and equitable education. These include Creating a Sustainable World: 21st Century Challenges and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: Your Role in Shaping a Fairer World.
The collaborative History Lessons research project found that young people were keen to learn more inclusive histories, but teachers needed additional support and new resources for a more inclusive curriculum. From this, we developed Our Migration Story with The Runnymede Trust and University of Cambridge, creating multiple award-winning web resources, lesson plans and classroom activities exploring the opportunities and challenges faced by Britain’s migrant communities.
Our Natural and Cultural Health Service is a programme of outdoor activities run by the Whitworth to promote good physical and mental wellbeing. Staff, students and the public are also encouraged to use our FIRS botanical gardens to bring gardening, wellbeing and botany to more people.
Our Sporticipate programme serves to provide free and low-cost entry-level sport sessions for the University and wider community. Sports staff also facilitate volunteering by colleagues and students for the good of local organisations.
Our researchers studying parasites have engaged diverse communities in the UK and Madagascar to share research findings and develop resources and toolkits to raise awareness, understanding and dialogue about parasitic worm infection.
Our Humanising Healthcare initiative embeds community service and engagement within dentistry, pharmacy and optometry programmes. It supports students to deliver essential healthcare and education to communities as part of the curriculum. It also encourages global volunteering and the development of civic values and skills in the future health workforce.
Our Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health has successfully established the Action on Antibiotic Drug Resistance: One Student. One Campus. One World programme. We’re now working to create a wider student-led network with other universities in the north-west and across Africa.
We have the UK’s largest medical school and are the biggest provider of graduate healthcare professionals to the NHS in England’s north-west. We also offer pioneering professional programmes in areas including global health, humanitarianism and international healthcare leadership.
Our student-run, campus zero waste shop, Want Not Waste, holds a community fridge. This contains food from unsold meals offered by local business and surplus raw ingredients provided by our catering outlets. Stocking these items combats local food waste while helping to tackle food insecurity within our own university community.
Our Take a Bite out of Climate Change partnership aims to share the scientific consensus about how food and agriculture contribute to climate change. It funds easily accessible information and fun activities for citizens such as Climate Food Flashcards, Farming for the Future workshops and the free e-book Food and Climate Change – Without the Hot Air.
Since its inception in 2013, the UK’s first student-led and campus-based foodbank, Manchester Central Foodbank, has helped thousands of local citizens with food insecurity. This included developing an online store and delivery system for vulnerable and isolated people, and providing 70,000 meals during the pandemic in 2020.
Our BA Geography students undertake a Food and Farming unit covering hunger, ethical consumerism, environmental sustainability, animal rights and social equity. Biosciences undergraduates take a Plants for the Future unit exploring how plant biology can address social and environmental challenges. Through a Green Biotechnology unit, students engage with the latest developments in sustainable food production, energy generation and pharmaceutical production.
Our Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering is examining how electronic engineering can improve food supply and sustainable energy production without increased pressures on our land. E-Agri Manchester is using e-devices for reducing waste, increasing yields and making crops more resilient. We also work on sustainable agriculture with the eight most research-intensive universities in the north of England through an N8 AgriFood programme.
A significant proportion of our students are from families that fall below the national poverty line. We offer a range of support to ensure that financial issues don’t present an obstacle for learners, including:
Our student community work on a range of projects to tackle extreme poverty and inequality. Love for the Streets was established by two Manchester students to use youth events, content and social media marketing to tackle homelessness in partnership with local charities. Once a Month fights period poverty through public campaigns and providing sanitary products to vulnerable women across Manchester.
The Homeless Healthcare Society helps improve the healthcare of Manchester’s homeless population by raising awareness of the medical inequalities and stigmas faced by homeless patients when accessing healthcare. The aim is to ultimately improve the care provided by tomorrow’s healthcare professionals.
Students’ and women’s rights
Promoting gender equality through study programmes
Library and open access
ProjectInc
Imagine Me Stories
Great Science Share for Schools
IntoUniversity Manchester North
Educating the region’s school children during lockdown to minimise disadvantage
Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) and professional programmes
Inclusive, sustainable and equitable education
Diversifying the school history curriculum
Green spaces, health and wellbeing
Sports participation
Educating diverse communities about parasitic infections
Humanising Healthcare
Antibiotic guardians
Health and wellbeing study programmes
Community Fridge
Take a Bite out of Climate Change
Manchester Central Foodbank
Sustainable food study programmes
Sustainable agriculture through electronic engineering
Student financial support
Student action
Homeless Healthcare Society
