Would you be interested in a university undergraduate student conducting a piece of research for your organisation?

Who?
The BA Professional Studies is a three-year degree delivered by the Lifelong Learning Centre at the University of Leeds. It is firmly grounded in the skills and knowledge that employers are looking for in professional roles today. Given its emphasis in the world of work and employability, it is a course particularly attractive to mature students, many of whom have pre-existing work experience, are local to Leeds and interested in contributing to their communities and the city as a whole.

What?
As part of their degree, the BA Professional Studies students are introduced to research from the first year and the Research in the Community initiative aims to increase the connections between the students’ coursework and the communities of Leeds. It works by offering the students, as part of their research modules (at level 2 and 3), the opportunity of conducting projects for voluntary, community or statutory organisations in Leeds who have research requirements.

How?
The potential collaboration involves the voluntary or community organisation providing a ‘brief’ of their research requirements, and the student drawing up a research project to meet that brief (with supervision from tutors), discussing and agreeing the brief and timescale, and then delivering it. This provides the opportunity for students to design and deliver a real-life on the ground project, developing their skills and awareness of the usefulness of research, and contributing to the work of the organisation as well as to their own professional development.

Is this something that your organisation may be interested in?
We are currently gathering expressions of interest (EOI) for the research modules to start at the end of January 2025 (and to be continued in the academic year 2025-26). Due to the capacity of the Programme’s managing team and tutors, the aim is to select 2 to 3 organisations to be matched with interested students.

To express your interest, please email a brief outline of your research requirement (area in which you have information or evidence needs, or idea about a particular study) to the address below. If your organisation is not fully ready to participate at this stage, but there is a potential interest, please do get in touch too as there will be more opportunities in future years.

Send your EOI to: Rosa Mas Giralt (Deputy Programme Manager BA Professional Studies) at r.masgiralt@leeds.ac.uk. Please do get in touch if you have any
questions. We look forward to hearing from you.