Universities Week partnered with the Natural History Museum this year to host a week-long public event that showcased the best of UK university research. Leeds Trinity University was one of the University’s selected and participated with @research_mob – a live research activity that took place at the Natural History Museum and simultaneously in four other cities on Wednesday 11 June.

Led by Liz Cable, Leeds Trinity University’s Senior Lecturer in Social Media, a team of Leeds Trinity University students acted as citizen reporters on the streets of Leeds, Sheffield, York and Newcastle-Upon-Tyne to pose the research questions of partner universities to members of the public. As well as feeding the public’s answers into the universities’ research projects, the @research_mob project hopes to create an online community of members of the public who are interested in taking part in academic research as researchers, as well as citizen researchers.

The University also opened up their bi-annual Research Day to the public, and hosted a Research Experience Day, showcasing:

  • Prof Karen Sayer’s research into the rural, ‘nature’ and the countryside, farming and farm animals in the Modern period (Prof Sayer is a founding member of  CREST’s CAIRN network)
  • a ‘Victorian Research Café’ focusing on the uses of everyday Victorian objects
  •  workshops on nutritional labelling and ‘Your Sunday Roast’ and an exploration of the concept of ‘mental toughness’ by researchers working in the University’s Departments of Sport, Health and Nutrition and Psychology
  • a joint reading and exploration of Tennyson’s ‘The Princess’, as well as a series of micro-lectures on ongoing research projects.