Psychology Impact Strategy
The Psychology Department greatly values working with the wider community beyond the University. We work closely with schools, professional organisations, industries and private companies. non-charitable bodies and other groups. We disseminate our work through a range of activities, including public events, conferences open to all, work with museums as well as through the use of both traditional and ‘newer’ media (e.g. blogs, webpages etc). This ensures that our activities have important impact for a wide range of communities – both locally, across the UK, and indeed internationally.
We have a number of mechanisms to help achieve this impact. Public events, organised by the University, the School of Social Sciences and research groupings in the department reach a wide range of audiences. For example, this year’s second Brunel Brain Awareness week was an open-invitation public event providing a series of short talks, posters and demonstrations designed to promote brain health and showcase Brunel's own contributions to neuroscience research. In 2010 and 2011 The Centre for Culture and Evolutionary Psychology held an international series on The Speed of Cultural and Evolutionary Change, and two evolutionary psychology meetings in 2010 on the financial markets and evolution and medicine. Speakers from Psychology speak regularly at Brunel‘s Public Lecture series. Individual staff frequently give public lectures both within the UK and around the world.
A second mechanism is through our active collaborations with partners from the community (such as schools and local organisations), and businesses and industry across Britain – and indeed the world. This includes, for example, work with local primary schools to help them identify children with dyslexia, and work on autism. Nationally this includes collaborations with the Metropolitan Police on security research, health bodies and organisations (for example, on helping GPs identify alcohol use), and professional bodies, such as the British Dental Association. We work closely with representatives of Britain’s different ethnics groups, and examine how migrants adapt to their new location. On the international stage, our work includes studies of well being in small villages in Africa and Asia, and sexual health and risk taking amongst adolescents in countries of the Former Soviet Union.
A third mechanism to help the impact of our work is through both traditional and modern media. Our psychologists regularly appear in the national media. Recent appearances include BBC Radio 4, BBC 5-Live; BBC World Service, The Economist, and in the Daily Telegraph. New Scientist, Daily Express, The Guardian, and the Daily Mail. Overseas these include CNN, America Today, PBS, Swedish Public Radio, Times of India; Irish Independent and many dozens more. We even have our own ‘columnists’ regularly contributing to professional magazines (such as the banking journal Global Custodian), and ‘bloggers’ (in magazines such as ‘Psychology Today’. We complement this with webpages that promote our research impact directly from Brunel, or from the many project websites associated with our research.
Further information can be found on the Departmental Home Page or email and ask about our work at our dedicated email on psychologicalimpact@gmail.com
Last updated August 2012
