The Public and Community Engagement with Research (PCER) Fund

PI: Sean Elias
Division: Medical Sciences
Department: Pandemic Sciences Institute, Nuffield Department of Medicine

A collaboration between the Pandemic Sciences Institute and the History of Science Museum, this project builds on a successful pilot to deliver two interactive engagement events in Oxford and Swindon. Using small-group and one-to-one conversations, object-handling and open discussion with researchers and healthcare practitioners, these events invite diverse audiences to share experiences, ask questions and shape conversation on topics around infectious disease and surveillance. By running events across different locations, the project broadens participation and ensures a wide range of public perspectives inform research dialogue.

PI: Anke Hein
Division: Social Sciences
Department: School of Archaeology

This project invites museum visitors and community participants to actively contribute to research into the role of taste as a tool for storytelling and research in museums through a sensory, taste-based workshop at the Ashmolean Museum. By taking part in tea tasting using replicas of historic cups, object handling, discussion and a guided tour on the history of tea, participants will help shape ongoing archaeological PhD research into the sensory properties of  historic ceramic vessel and will be acknowledged in publications. The project will provide a model for sensory activities and invite visitors to co-create knowledge and correct/re-interpret curatorial understandings of museum collections.

PI: Nina Higson-Sweeney
Division: Medical Sciences
Department: Department of Experimental Psychology

This project involves parents, teachers, clinicians and young people in co-designing an accessible website and/or social media platform that share research on youth mental health in a clear, jargon-free way. Through collaborative workshops and iterative feedback, participants will help shape how the research on the platform is presented, shared and updated, ensuring it meets real community needs. By improving access to evidence-based research, the project will strengthen public understanding, increase access to information and help bridge the gap between research and practice.

PI: Rachel Hindmarsh
Division: Medical Sciences
Department: Nuffield Department of Medicine

This project will engage people living with inflammatory bowel disease as collaborators in immunological tolerance research through the co-creation and performance of music. Through inclusive workshops IBD patients will explore themes of tolerance and be supported to compose original music and inform a new work by co-lead composer Zakiya Leeming. Patients will collaborate with musicians to bring their pieces to life in a public performance at the Old Fire Station. The public performance and project will support IBD patients to better understand their conditions, share their lived experiences to shape research, and promote public awareness of the challenges of living with chronic illness.

PI: Eleanor Hoverd
Division: Medical Sciences
Department: Nuffield Department of Primary Health Care Sciences

This arts-based project will bring NHS staff and patients together as partners to co-create research on workforce sustainability in general practice. Through creative workshops and visual methods, patients from under-served communities and frontline staff share lived experiences will co-design a locally rooted vision and set of values for workforce sustainability. The process will strengthen trust and understanding between researchers, frontline staff including receptionists and administrative staff, and patients, creating a shared language around what it means to build and sustain a flourishing NHS workforce. The co-produced artworks and insights ensure staff and patient voices remain central to ongoing research, engagement and policy discussions.

PI: Jiedi Lei
Division: Medical Sciences
Department: Department of Experimental Psychology

In this project autistic young people are involved as active collaborators in the creative exploration of strengths-based understandings of autism. Through participatory workshops, young people will explore unhelpful stereotypes depicted in media and be encouraged to identify and explore their Character Strengths (CS), creating zines that share personal stories of strengths and challenge deficit-focused stereotypes. By centring autistic voices in creative outputs shared beyond the workshops, lived experience directly informs research, engagement and public narratives.

PI: Alfred Lo
Division: Humanities
Department: Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Young people and teachers will be engaged as active participants in this project, exploring how artificial intelligence and global culture can be used to make English education more engaging and inclusive. Through creative classroom workshops developed with the Oxford English Dictionary, students will draw on familiar popular culture of the Korean Wave to examine how English evolves globally and digitally, how generative AI represents language, and how these tools can be used critically and responsibly. The project aims to inspire curiosity about global English diversity and encourage positive attitudes towards modern languages. The project will culminate in a free, replicable classroom toolkit for teachers to integrate AI and dictionary resources in inclusive and motivating ways.

PI: Melanie Rowntree
Division: Gardens, Libraries & Museums
Department: Ashmolean Museum

Young people and communities will collaborate with researchers to contribute to new, decolonial approaches to museum education. Through school workshops with Bangladeshi and Pakistani pupils in Bradford and participatory research with community knowledge keepers, students will reinterpret colonial collections through their own perspectives. Using content from the upcoming ‘Colonial Views of India: Photographs by Eugene Clutterbuck Impey’, these insights will help reshape the Ashmolean’s Global Encounters programme for schools. This project aims to challenge colonial framings and model a decolonial approach for future museum education practice, with the resulting teaching resources and their evaluation establishing a framework to guide and share decolonial pedagogy across the sector.

PI: Elke Wynberg
Division: Medical Sciences
Department: Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU)

This project will engage young people and local communities in Cambodia in global health research, collaborating to help to shape research priorities and health communication. By expanding the work undertaken by and with the existing Youth Advisory Group on Health and Research Engagement (YAGHRE), community members will co-develop locally relevant research agendas the reflects local pririties and map trusted health information sources to guide effective health communication. This participatory approach strengthens dialogue, builds trust and scientific literacy, and ensures health research is conducted with communities rather than on them.