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: UK
Each year, we host the Making a Difference Awards to celebrate the incredible and inspiring work of our University community. The awards highlight the extensive range of social responsibility initiatives of our staff, students, alumni and external partners, and covers categories such as benefit to research; widening participation; environmental sustainability and equality, diversity and inclusion.
‘From Boys to Men’, a project from our School of Social Sciences, explores why some boys become domestic abuse perpetrators and what more can be done to prevent it. The ground-breaking research findings led to a number of significant interventions at a local and national level. The findings also contributed to Greater Manchester’s Combined Authority’s (GMCA) 10-year strategy to tackle gender-based violence, and the toolkit generated by the project has influenced school-based preventative strategies as well as being rolled out in Malta, France and Spain.
We launched the first ever museum-sector-specific Carbon Literacy toolkit as part of Roots & Branches, a partnership between Manchester Museum, Museum Development North West (MDNW), and The Carbon Literacy project. The toolkit helps museum professionals and volunteers undertake training, to then certify as Carbon Literate. This foundational work supports staff, volunteers, and partners to build their understanding of climate action, so that they can make informed sustainable choices. The project also encourages museums to develop organisational pledges to act against climate change.
Our work in hydrology and hydrochemistry to understand metals, carbon and gases in water systems has led to the development of a highly successful spin-out company, Salamander, which has brought to market two cutting-edge pieces of water monitoring software – chloroclam and hydroclam – which are being used in industry to improve water and marine system monitoring. We have also undertaken work to understand hypoxia – dead fish zones – which has directly informed marine industry practice on aquatic ecosystems.
We provide access to university facilities (e.g. labs, technology, plant stocks) to local farmers and food producers to improve sustainable farming practices as part of our H3 programme – one of four research consortia funded by the £47.5M ‘Transforming UK Food System for Healthy People and a Healthy Environment SPF Programme’ delivered by UKRI, in partnership with the Global Food Security Programme, BBSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC, Defra, DHSC, PHE, Innovate UK and FSA. As part of this programme we provide local food producers with access to our proprietary technologies allowing them to diversify their food production. This includes access to our laboratories in the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology for analysis of crop nutrition and soil carbon. We are also building a hydroponic demonstrator as part of an InnovateUK Knowledge Transfer Partnership with a local Manchester-based company who are producing a sustainable artificial growth substrate. This company has access to university facilities and technologies that is aiming to bring to market new and sustainable growth medium. This will develop a new way of reusing waste foam by mixing foam particles with adhesives that absorb water, to make a new type of synthetic soil, with many different applications that have benefits for advancing sustainable food growing practice. As part of this we are building a demonstrator at The Firs. The Firs environmental research station has recently undergone a major redevelopment with the investment of £2million from the university’s endowment fund which has enabled the creation of a state of the art greenhouses facilities that are being used for issues relating to food security and climate change. The site is made up of fourteen climate controlled growing compartments which are able to produce a range of different environments from tropical to sub-arctic. By doing this they are able to simulate different growing environments to replicate conditions from around the world and conditions as a result of climate change.
Fresh-water ecosystems (community outreach) Additionally, peatland restoration working with Professor Martin Evans has focused on flood mitigation and greenhouse gas reduction in collaboration with Moors for the Future, National Trust, Environment Agency, United Utilities, Yorkshire Peat Partnership and others. Sustainable fisheries (community outreach) Prof Holly Shiels is also working on the impact of fossil fuel-based pollution on commercially important fish like cod and halibut and has shared this work with local and global communities through an engaging video. Our NanoWhales Project has also been supporting the fight against the accumulation of plastic waste in the Mediterranean on life under water through the expeditions and the development and sharing of free resources highlighting the plight of the whales. Overfishing (community outreach) Conservation and sustainable utilisation of the oceans (events) Professor Holly Shiels is the President of the Fisheries Society of the British Isles – a society that works to the benefit of fish biology and fisheries science. An example of a recent event that took part through this Presidency has been on Fish Habitat and Ecology in a Changing Climate.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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. The project is piloting public and civic engagement models with local libraries across Manchester.
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.
Life below water, in rivers and at sea, is threatened by waste flowing from urban river channels into the oceans. We’ve been highlighting the effect of microplastics – very small pieces of plastic debris including microbeads, microfibres and plastic fragments – on river systems and marine life through a range of pro-active media coverage, engagement with water companies and input into UK legislation on water management.
Researchers in Chemical Engineering and Analytical Sciences have worked with our spin-out company Arvia Technology to develop an electrochemical process that has dramatically reduced wastewater pollution levels and enabled water recycling across numerous industries. The Arvia process has reduced pollutant levels from pesticides to match UK drinking water standards; removed 90% of pharmaceutical residues and natural hormones from industrial wastewater; and reduced the release of high microbial wastewaters which can cause anti-microbial resistance. Arvia Technology has now installed treatment systems in 25 companies across 11 countries, including the UK and China.
Through the Diverseafood project, our researchers are investigating how seafood can contribute to sustainable, healthy diets. They are assessing the best methods to transition to more diverse seafood intake by looking at the impacts of sustainable aquaculture at the levels of business models, policy, and consumer acceptance.
We’re ending investments in fossil fuel reserve and extraction companies by 2022, and ‘decarbonising’ all other investments by 2038. This policy was developed in consultation with the University’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and our Students’ Union.
Climate scientists at our Tyndall Centre are partnering with Bristol-based band Massive Attack to jointly examine the carbon footprint of the music industry. Utilising data from the Massive Attack touring schedule will provide information and guidance to the wider music industry to reduce negative environmental impacts.
Our academics are involved in GrowGreen, a five year, EU-wide project that promotes nature-based solutions to climate change. The project involves a range of citizens, business and public-private partnerships in neighbourhoods and across cities to promote learning, sharing and replicating nature-based solutions and strategies to urban sustainability challenges.
Our Manchester Museum has been awarded Arts Council England and National Lottery Project Grant funding for an ambitious two-year partnership project in collaboration with Museum Development North West and the Carbon Literacy Trust. The project will accelerate the museum sector’s ability to respond to the climate crisis. The Museum will host the ‘roots’: creating a nationally significant co-working hub of cultural environmental action that will bring together museum staff, educators, environmentalists, artists, researchers, third sector organisations and students.
Research by Alliance Manchester Business School has demonstrated how large-scale transitions are needed to deliver significant climate change. This has transformed how reducing greenhouse gas emissions is understood and addressed by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and has fed directly into policy recommendations made by the European Environment Agency.
To enable the UK to deliver significant carbon emissions reductions, the University created the Tyndall Local Carbon Budget Tool, helping cities, regions and organisations to play their part in achieving the global Paris Agreement. Building on the Setting City Area Targets and Trajectories for Emissions Reduction (SCATTER) project, this foundational research established the importance of embedding carbon budgets – rather than end point targets – in setting carbon reduction targets. It has been used by 250 UK local authorities, led local policymakers to focus on immediate emissions reductions and shaped global policy as part of the United Nations’ Race to Zero initiative.
Making a Difference Awards
From Boys to Men
Manchester Museum’s Carbon Literacy Toolkit
Working with Industries to Prevent Aquatic Ecosystem Damage
Sustainable farming and food production: sharing our facilities and knowledge
SDG 14 – Life Below Water: engagement activities
We offer free educational programmes on fresh-water ecosystems (water irrigation practices, water management/conservation) for local and national communities. For example, Prof Jamie Woodward’s work on microplastic accumulation in UK waterways has been massively influential and has been shared and co-developed with on local anglers (Tame Rivers Anglers) and charities (Rivers Trust and Friends of the Earth) to influence UK policy and the wider public through engaging videos to engage the public and through BBC documentaries that have a global reach (link 1 link 2) and also through educational resources for school children.
We offer free educational programme and outreach for local and national communities on the sustainable management of fisheries, aquaculture and tourism. For example, the overfishing of sharks and rays is the primary cause for their catastrophic (>80% of populations threatened with extinction) decline in the past 25 years. Our University’s Shiels lab contributed key images and a novel developmental scale for catsharks used in one of the largest educational citizen science outreach projects in the UK, The Great Egg Hunt, run in partnership with The Shark Trust. Over the Easter weekend in 2022 a fantastic 7,560 eggcases were recorded across the UK and scaled using our data. The images and scale has also been included in the Field Studies Centre leaflets used at their marines stations for teaching school groups across the UK, furthering our engagement with the public.
We offer free educational outreach activities for local and national communities to raise awareness about overfishing, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and destructive fishing practices. For example, Professor Holy Shiels worked in partnership with the Physiological Society – Europe’s largest network of physiologists – to create and share 4-video educational outreach video-blogs for local, national and international communities on location in the Arctic regarding the Greenland Shark and impact of overfishing in the Halibut fishing industry on this enigmatic species. We also partner with Sustainable Fish Cities, using educational outreach activities across Manchester to raise awareness about destructive fishing practices and promote sustainable fishing.
We support and organise events aimed to promote conservation and sustainable utilisation of the oceans, seas, lakes, rivers and marine resources. Our Shiels lab contributes to the Shark Trust and European Elasmobranch Society (a non-profit organisation coordinating European activities of national European organisations dedicated to the study, management or conservation of sharks, skates, rays, and chimaeras) meetings with student talks and keynote lectures on shark and ray conservation – for example see this link. The Shiels lab also works on sharks and climate change events in partnership with the BBC, through marine magazine activities and also through free events that have taken place in partnership with the Fisheries Society for the British Isles on video platforms that examine climate change and sharks in UK waters.
Renewable energy pledge
Social responsibility partnerships
Policy@Manchester
Public engagement partnerships
Q-Step data partnerships
Student learning partnerships
Justice Hub
Manchester Innocence Project
Nature Recovery Network
IncredibleOceans
UK rivers and microplastics
Removing harmful pollutants from industrial wastewater with innovative technology
Diverseafood
Divesting from fossil fuels
The carbon footprint of the music industry
GrowGreen project
Roots and Branches
Changing how international policy organisations understand and manage environmental problems
Empowering local climate-change action
