Goal 4: Research
The University’s research activities play a key role in our approach to the Sustainable Development Goals.
Here’s a wider showcase of our work addressing Goal 4. Find out about our researchers, research outputs, research projects and activities connected to the SDGs through The University of Manchester Research Explorer.
Each year we launch a report which highlights how we are addressing key issues facing humanity as set-out by the United Nations. As the UK’s first university to have social responsibility as a core goal, we’ve developed a strategy to tackle the SDGs in four inter-related ways: through our research, learning and students, public engagement and operations.
Our latest SDG report shows that the University published over 22,000 pieces of research on the SDGs in the past five years, which is 4% of the UK’s entire share of publications. It details teaching and learning programmes that address the SDGs, such as our ‘Creating a Sustainable World’ interdisciplinary unit.
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.
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.
We produced On Gender to identify what we know – and what we need to know – about gender inequality in tackling the big policy agendas devolved to Greater Manchester and other areas, with devolution deals in areas such as ageing, labour markets, education, parenting and sexual violence.
#BeeWell is an initiative established in Greater Manchester in 2019 by our University, Anna Freud, The Gregson Family Foundation, and Greater Manchester Combined Authority. The programme aims to explore young people’s opinions on wellbeing and the ways in which it can be improved. The findings inform activity across Greater Manchester, with schools, voluntary sector organisations and children’s services working closely with young people to interpret and act on the results.
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.