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.
Filtering subjects: Social inclusion
The University’s School of Social Sciences hosts a four-day Summer School on Women in Logic every year. The programme is aimed at 16- to 18-year-old women and girls from widening participation backgrounds, with the goal of addressing the underrepresentation of women in logic and philosophy, while also encouraging more widening participation students to pursue philosophy as a field of study.
The Chrysalis Family Centre has served as the setting for a fruitful collaboration between the University and local refugees and asylum seekers, fostering both language skills and community building. The initiative, spearheaded by our politics department, began as an English-language conversation project. Every week, students meet with refugees and asylum seekers at the Chrysalis Centre, offering them a chance to practice English and engage with the broader community. As the Chrysalis Family Centre continues to thrive, the collaboration between Manchester students and local refugees remains a powerful testament to the positive impact of community engagement.
The Manchester Christmas Dinner project started in 2013 with a vision: “No care leaver will be alone on Christmas day.” The initiative aims to provide young care-experienced people, usually around 50, with a memorable Christmas Day experience. It offers a warm and welcoming venue, delicious food, engaging activities facilitated by friendly hosts, and, of course, presents. The initiative received a Making a Difference Award for its outstanding professional services in social responsibility.
University of Manchester Physics Outreach (UMPO) is a student-led project that aims to increase the diversity of student participation in STEM-based subjects (primarily physics) through engaging outreach activities. These include workshops for both primary and secondary schools, and science demonstrations at markets in the form of ‘science busking’. The project received a Making a Difference Award for its outstanding contribution to widening participation.
The Manchester 10/10 programme is a collaborative student-staff project designed to empower and build a sense of belonging for Black/Black-mixed undergraduate students through tailored events and opportunities. Designed in partnership with Black Heritage students, the events support students to build their peer, professional and academic networks and develop the confidence to engage with all that the Manchester student experience has to offer.
NAYS Social Projects are a community empowerment program that seek to provide a platform and forum for Indonesia’s youth to apply and share their knowledge in addressing various issues in remote areas of Indonesia, where there is still significant inequality in access to essential sectors like education, economics, health, and the environment. The initiative received a Making a Difference Award for its outstanding contribution to equality, diversity and inclusion.
The Laura Nuttall scholarship award supports students from a less privileged background with a physical condition, long term illness or learning difference, with a scholarship of £3,000 per year for every year of their degree.
University’s School of Social Sciences launched the scholarship in memory of Politics, Philosophy and Economics graduate Laura Nuttall, who passed away after a long battle against cancer.
The Great Science Share for Schools is a pioneering campaign dedicated to fostering scientific curiosity and education among young learners (5-14 years). The campaign is centred around an annual programme of activity culminating in a large-scale sharing event on the second week of June each year.
The GSSfS has been granted the prestigious patronage of the United Kingdom National Commission for UNESCO in 2024. This recognition underscores the event’s profound alignment with UNESCO’s values, solidifying its status as a beacon of excellence in science education.
The University of Manchester has a partnership with Greater Manchester Poverty Action (GMPA), a recognised leader on poverty in the UK and exists to end poverty in Greater Manchester and beyond. They deliver independent, evidence-based activities to address socio-economic disadvantage.
The University’s Science and Engineering Education Research and Innovation Hub (SEERIH) is a nationally recognised hub for teacher development. Through several innovative and research informed projects and programmes, SEERIH engages and develops teachers to ensure high-quality learning outcomes for young people across Greater Manchester and on a national scale.
Find out about SEERIH’s projects and impact, here.
The University’s Institute of Education has developed Local Matters, an initiative that empowers staff in primary and secondary schools to engage in action-based research to develop an evidence based local response to local issues.
We work alongside and empower the school and community through a range of research skills and principles to create a localised, evidence-based response to local issues. The approach recognises that poverty is different in different places; Southampton is not the same as Bradford, so requires localised knowledge and localised answers. Essentially, it supports school staff to become place-based social justice researchers.
Our Global Development Institute is the UK’s largest university-based postgraduate centre specialising in international development. The institute addresses global inequalities to promote a socially-just world.
Emeritus Professor Stephanie Barrientos, from the Global Development Institute, has been elected as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Fairtrade Foundation, bringing her research experience in corporate social responsibility, trade and labour standards, gender, and fair and ethical trade in global value chains.
Led by academics at the University of Manchester, a new report, Whose Campus, Whose Security? draws upon a national survey and localised interviews in Greater Manchester to centre on the perspectives of students. In line with our commitment to Social Responsibility and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, the national research warns that harmful securitisation practices can undermine efforts to create a welcoming environment for all students. The report urges higher education institutions to do more to ensure an inclusive and welcoming environment for all students. The full report, the executive summary, and a graphic abstract can be accessed through the CoDE website, and pieces from the authors can be found in Times Higher Education, and WonkHE.
Our University has been awarded a Platinum Watermark by the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) which is the highest honour that can be granted to an institution. The award recognises our exceptional contribution to public engagement which includes the way we work to engage society with activities in research, teaching and culture. We received praise for our efforts in making campus more welcoming and accessible for community use, involving partners and communities in shaping the research and teaching at the University, and our significant commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion. Find examples of our local, national and international public engagement work here.
The Purple Wave is a UoM Sport initiative designed to bring our community together to celebrate physical activity and shared experiences. It’s all about participation, not elite performance – just having fun, making friends, and being active with like-minded people. As part of this, people can become a Purplewave fundraiser, raising money at events like the Great Manchester Run. Over the years, hundreds of wonderful fundraisers have raised tens of thousands of pounds to support good causes right here on campus. From rebuilding the Paterson Cancer Research building to providing disadvantaged students with scholarships – brilliant Purple Wave fundraisers have helped make some amazing things happen for our community.
The University’s Whitworth gallery is the first gallery in the North-West of England to proudly join the hundreds of local councils, schools, universities, libraries, and cultural institutes who have Sanctuary status, pledging to create a culture of solidarity and inclusivity, and welcome people from a forced displacement background. The Sanctuary Awards recognise and celebrate the organisations who go above and beyond to welcome people seeking sanctuary.
Dr Caroline Miles and Professor Rose Broad from The University of Manchester are involved in ‘The abuse of women who run: experiences, perceptions and fears’, a project working with Greater Manchester Police and Merseyside police. The research involves analysing police data on recorded incidents of abuse experienced by women runners as well as surveys with women runners about their experiences. Following this, there will be events to raise awareness and share key learnings to help tackle street harassment.
Our researchers have been working with The University of Liverpool on an ethnographic study of police vehicle stops. The findings suggested Black men are routinely subjected to stop and search vehicle checks more than any other group. From this, our researchers made several recommendations including for all police vehicle stops to be recorded, to identify any racial disproportionality in their use and investigate links between vehicle stops and disproportionality in stop and search. This study has significantly influenced national policy and practice on racial disproportionality in the use of police powers.
One World Together, co-founded by the University’s Global Development Institute, Dr Nicola Banks, is an innovative social enterprise rooted in principles of trust, solidarity and equity. It shifts money and decision-making power to the organisations closest to communities. With partners in Manchester, the North-West of England, Kenya and Zambia, One World Together brings local voices and experiences to the forefront of the movement, deepening their supporters’ understandings of poverty and inequality and of why local actors are so important to overcoming these.
Founders and Funders: Slavery and the building of a University is an exhibition at the University’s John Rylands Research Institute. It explores how profits from slave trading, ownership of enslaved people, and manufacturing with slave-grown cotton funded the cultural and educational development of Manchester. Core to the exhibition is research conducted by a diverse team of emerging scholars who undertook the Race, Migration & Humanitarianism: Legacies of Slavery and Colonialism in the Modern World module as part of their MA History. This is an important step on a journey we started with the initial research into our University’s links to slavery, in conjunction with seeking the views of staff, students and alumni.
Elimisha Msichana Elimisha Jamii na Astronomia (Swahili for “educate a girl, educate the entire community with Astronomy”) is a project founded by Faculty of Science and Engineering PhD student Ann Njeri. The project is addressing the issue of gender disparity and inequality in education amongst girls in rural Kenya and Uganda through outreach, mentorship, scholarships and targeted STEM workshop programmes which are guided by long-term student tracking and monitoring.
Co-founded by the University’s Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health PhD student Beth Barnes, the Alternative Football League (AF League) is the North West’s only fully inclusive football league for women, non-binary and transgender individuals. AF League have three leagues across Manchester and Liverpool with 30 teams and over 400 players. They aim to use football as a platform to improve the mental health of women and non-binary people throughout the UK with their very own mental health and inclusivity workshops.
Write on Point is a project which aims to widen participation to university by supporting students from under-represented backgrounds with their UCAS personal statements. It was developed by Tom Fryer, a PhD student from the University’s Institute of Education, after he noticed the wealth of research showing inequalities in access to support for getting into university. The project has supported over 1,400 students since it started in 2015, increasing university access and reducing the stress around the UCAS personal statement.
Don’t Brush it Under the Carpet campaign aims to improve mental wellbeing and raise awareness of self-harm as an issue for older people in Greater Manchester. It involves collaborative working between representatives from the award-winning Shining a Light on Suicide Campaign, GM Older People’s Network, GM Ageing Hub, health professionals, UoM researchers and focus groups of older residents led to the establishment of the Greater Manchester Older People’s Mental Health Clinical Reference Group.
Manchester Access Programme (MAP) is the University’s flagship post-16 widening participation programme for Y12 students from Greater Manchester. Every year, hundreds of students across Greater Manchester are selected for the programme that helps them gain a place at The University of Manchester, or another research-intensive university, through our online and on-campus events, workshops, and an academic assignment.
