Goal 11: 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 11.
A research team from the Alliance Manchester Business School and Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIOIR) is working on a project for The Productivity Institute: ‘Addressing the net-zero and productivity challenges: How could the housing and construction sector play a key role?’. The team is looking to develop a more precise understanding of the productivity challenges in the construction sector and hope to uncover ways in which more sustainable practices can deliver productivity improvements. The research project focuses on solutions for the UK market and involves extensive collaboration with industry. Importantly, the ultimate aim is to help advance towards the UK’s net-zero target and improve productivity growth targets.
To mark the UN’s International Day of Older Persons a lecturer in Social and Cultural Geography from our University has created a booklet which showcases the different ways older age is experienced in Greater Manchester, alongside an accompanying animation. This booklet offers a guide to a more immersive, flexible, creative and participatory approach for engaging with those within the category – enabling policy communities, academics, and others to gain a richer, localised and more personal understanding of what it means to be an older person. The project also responds to research and campaigns that have found representations of older age often fall back on medicalised, stereotypical accounts of what constitutes older lives.
The University Living Lab applies the expertise of students to real-world sustainability challenges through developing student research projects with external organisations to help meet sustainability goals. The University Living Lab was created after Dr Jennifer O’Brien from our University’s School of Environment, Education and Development and Academic Lead for Sustainability Teaching and Learning was awarded a Higher Education and SDGs Challenge Grant by the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU). In 2022, over 40,000 staff and students at our University were nominated for The Earthshot Prize for their practical action on climate change. The Earthshot Prize utilizes the massive global force for sustainability to produce change whilst shaping the decision makers of the future. In the last two years, the University has saved CO2 through active travel, shaped municipal climate change policy, increased biodiversity and enabled ethical consumption whilst empowering and equipping the future workforce of a net zero world.