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 Greater Manchester Citizens Panel contributes to the strategic direction of the Greater Manchester Civic University Agreement, Greater Manchester Universities and research projects at the University of Manchester. 

The panel’s role is to analyse, understand, and act on the views of citizens across the city region. The panel is also supporting researchers at The University of Manchester to connect their work with the citizens of Greater Manchester. 

University of Manchester academics are working closely with Manchester City Council to tackle health inequalities.  

Making Manchester Fairer is Manchester City Council’s action plan to address health inequalities in the city. The plan draws on lived experiences and research to address the socioeconomic factors that drive inequalities between people with the worst health and people with the best health. 

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.

Alliance Manchester Business School and Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIOIR) are developing 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 we have 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.

Sustainable Futures aims to bring together the unique depth and breadth of internationally leading research at our University, as well as interdisciplinary working to produce sustainable solutions for urgent environmental challenges. The organisation also aims to develop complete understandings of the environmental systems on which we depend and how humans interact with them, spurring scientific innovation and facilitating societal change at a scale and pace to address environmental crises.

The ESRC festival of Social Science is an annual celebration of the research conducted in social sciences and its profound impact on society. It offers a fascinating insight into some of the country’s leading research and how it influences our social, economic, and political lives – both now and in the future. The festival is open to everyone and is a unique opportunity to engage directly with researchers about the projects they work on.

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.

Our African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC), funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) as part of UK Aid, tackles complex problems in some of Africa’s fastest growing urban areas. Aimed at reducing urban poverty and inequality, our research will generate new evidence to catalyse integrated, sustainable, inclusive approaches to urban development in partnership with frontline humanitarian responders, effective policy influencers, local government networks and deeply rooted civil society groups.

Our research on Urban Living Labs has transformed sustainable infrastructure provision locally, and enhanced capacity in East Africa, South America and the Philippines.

Locally we’ve shaped £26m of infrastructure investment by Manchester City Council as well as replacing 20,000km of delivery van trips with e-cargo bikes. Globally, we’ve delivered walkability action plans and improved road safety for 5.8m citizens across East Africa, South America and the Philippines.

An Independent Inequalities Commission involved two experts from the University set out a range of measures for tackling inequality and transforming public policy across Greater Manchester.

The Commission outlined specific, ambitious recommendations for the future of our city-region, covering economic growth, health, wellbeing, jobs, housing, transport, skills and training, which will be embedded within public service delivery at all levels and informs the elected Mayor’s next Greater Manchester Strategy.

Our Work and Equalities Institute identifies and promotes the conditions for more inclusive and fair work and employment arrangements.

The research explores challenges for equality, fairness and sustainability in the workplace, and considers how employers are responding to the challenge of an increasingly diverse workforce and what new institutions are needed to enforce fair rights and responsibilities at work.

Our Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics is using its global research status to advance innovative STEM training and infrastructure development for research communities across Africa.

This includes the Development in Africa with Radio Astronomy and Big Data programmes, supporting self-sustaining research communities and investment in new research infrastructure in Africa.

Our Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Tyndall Manchester have been collaborating with Electricity North West to help better manage its network, improving sustainability and saving money for the company and customers alike.

Our research with them addressed three key areas that impact electricity supply: smart distribution networks for managing supply with demand; managing power flow fluctuations; and assessing the carbon footprint of different network investment options.

Our work led to changes in their network investment, enhancing renewable energy sources and reducing energy bills for customers. This work could fundamentally change electricity supply in the UK, with approval being agreed for national rollout.

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.

Our Global Development Institute has examined whether cultivating in groups – by voluntarily pooling land, labour, funds and skills and sharing costs and benefits – enables small farmers to create larger, more profitable enterprises in South Asia and beyond.

The research in Kerala, south India showed that carefully structured group farming created sustainable, food-secure livelihoods for vast numbers of poor women farmers.

Our Global Development Institute (GDI) is Europe’s largest research and teaching institute focused on poverty and inequality. The GDI runs the Effective States and Inclusive Development (ESID) Research Centre, which investigates how politics promotes inclusive development and government accountability. Recent research suggests that countries with the highest government capacity can reduce income poverty at twice the speed of countries with the weakest capacity. Spanning 16 countries, our research is deepening the understanding of governance in developing countries, and helping to influence policy and practices and improve people’s lives