PCER Fund

We’re delighted to share details of PCER Fund awardees from the Michaelmas Term 2025 application window. We received 32 applications and awarded funding to 9 projects. The proposals covered a wide range of public and community engagement with research activities, representing multiple divisions and disciplines. Planned projects will take place in Oxfordshire, across the UK, and internationally, demonstrating the diversity and impact of engagement work across the University.

We were pleased to receive applications from researchers and public engagement professionals at various stages of their careers, reflecting a broad spectrum of experience and perspectives.

Many thanks to everyone who applied and to our reviewers – both internal to the University and members of our external Public & Community Panel– who assessed applications to help decide the final projects to be funded.

You can read summaries of our latest funded projects below.

To read about previously funded projects you can browse our list here and explore projects by Division dating back to the 2021/2 academic year.

Michaelmas Term 2025: Funded projects

Let’s Talk About: Surveillance –‘Tracking Outbreaks and Resistance’  PI: Sean Elias Division: Medical Sciences Department: Pandemic Sciences Institute, Nuffield Department of Medicine

‘Let’s Talk About’ is a novel format PCER event conceived as a collaboration between the Pandemic Sciences Institute and History of Science Museum. On 12th June 2025 we ran a pilot event focused on the topic of Stigma and infectious disease. Adopting an interactive format, the event saw our audience assigned to small groups that rotated around 5 resident experts, a blend of early careers researchers and healthcare practitioners. At each “station”, the groups’ conversations – guided by the experts - explored different experiences and perspectives on illness and stigma. Each expert had brought an object with them that prompted questions and discussions. This scientific “speed dating” was followed by a more traditional panel discussion and finished off with free time for relaxed one-on-one questions. The format was designed to encourage and empower audience participation and freedom to express their opinions in a comfortable setting. In parallel the format was designed for our experts to explore novel ways to engage audiences.

Our proposal is to repeat and expand on this pilot event with a new subject, ‘surveillance’, building on successes and audience/participant feedback from the pilot. For our second event in the series we also propose holding parallel events, in both our original location in Oxford as well as at a second location in Swindon as part of the Festival of Tomorrow. We want to identify how different audiences embrace our format, engage with our experts and compare and contrast the directions that conversations take.

Tasting the Past: A Sensory Exploration of Tea in Museum Collections PI: Anke Hein Division: Social Sciences Department: School of Archaeology

 Smell and taste have direct neurological links to emotions and memories (Ehrich et al. 2023, Breslin 2013). As such, in a museum context, smell-based activities can evoke powerful connections to the past. This project expands upon methods in the “The Olfactory Storytelling Toolkit: A “How-to” Guide for Working with Smells in the Museum and Heritage Institutions” (Ehrich et al. 2023). It explores the role of taste as a tool for storytelling and research in museums. A collaborative team from the School of Archaeology and Crossmodal Research Laboratory (Department of Experimental Psychology) will work with the Ashmolean Museum, GLAM Outreach professionals, WeaveYard community curatorial platform, and Oxford ceramic artist, Jynsym Ong to deliver a taste-based workshop to museum visitors. The workshop invites participants to drink tea from replicas of historic cups, attend a guided tour with object handling, and discover the history of tea. Feedback from the tea-tasting session directly informs ongoing archaeological PhD research into the sensory properties of historic ceramic vessels. Participants will be acknowledged in publications. We provide a model for sensory activities and invite visitors to co-create knowledge and correct/re-interpret curatorial understandings of museum collections; benefiting museum visitors and staff, artists and researchers.

Nuggets of Research: Co-designing a website to bridge the translation gap in youth mental health research PI: Nina Higson-Sweeney Division: Medical Sciences Department: Department of Experimental Psychology

 This project aims to collaborate with key stakeholders to co-design a website and/or social media platforms that disseminates the latest research in youth mental health in a condensed, jargon-free format to the general public. We will host co-design workshops with parents, teachers, clinicians, and researchers to identify what the website/social media will look like, how it will function, and how information regarding new research is uploaded and shared. We will then engage in an iterative process of design and feedback, before launching the website/social media and evaluating its reach and reception.

As one of the main issues in translating research into practice tends to be accessibility (e.g., paywalls) and awareness of information, the co-design element of this project should ensure that the resources developed meet the needs of stakeholders. Hopefully, this increased access to evidence-based research will result in greater knowledge and awareness of youth mental health, and contribute towards reducing the gap between evidence and implementation.

The funding from PCER will be used to reimburse stakeholders and a casual research assistant, and pay for software fees and advertising costs. In the long-term, this will be an international resource that is mutually beneficial for researchers and the general public.

 This project uses the co-creation and performance of music as a creative medium for engaging inflammatory bowel disease patients with immunological tolerance research.

Tolerance mechanisms such as regulatory T-cells play a key role in preventing autoimmune disease by maintaining the body’s tolerance to beneficial bacteria. Recent studies by the Translational Gastroenterology and Liver Unit (TGLU), led by project co-lead Paul Klenerman, uncover why the body can lose this tolerance – leading to IBD - and how it can be recovered. ‘Tolerance’ as a metaphor also prompts more holistic discussions about coping with chronic illness and resulting stigma.

Building on our team’s creative, interdisciplinary, and participatory approach to engagement in Thanks for the Memories (T4TM), this project will run inclusive workshops supporting IBD patients to compose original music inspired by immunological and metaphorical dimensions of ‘tolerance’ and to 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 project will support IBD patients to better understand their conditions, share their lived experiences to shape impactful tolerance research, and promote public awareness of the challenges of living with chronic illness.

Workforce Voices: the art of workforce sustainability

PI: Eleanor Hoverd

Division: Medical Sciences

Department: Nuffield Department of Primary Health Care Sciences

This arts-based project will ignite conversation and connection between NHS staff and patients in general practice, in a highly deprived area in the Northeast of England. By co-designing a locally rooted vision and set of values for workforce sustainability, the project will give voice to those often unheard in national workforce debates. This includes a critical focus on the gatekeeper experiences of receptionists and administrative teams, alongside patients in under-served communities, acknowledging the high burden and pivotal role they play in managing patient access and flow.

The process will strengthen trust and understanding between researchers, frontline staff, and patients, creating a shared language around what it means to build and sustain a flourishing NHS workforce. Visual and creative methods including graphic illustration, staff and researcher artwork, photography, and a patient-staff “values tree” will make complex ideas accessible and emotionally resonant. The co-created artwork will represent ‘common ground’ for the Workforce Voices research partnership (an academic partnership between Oxford, Newcastle, Northumbria, York and Birmingham) to share as a representation of dialogues, empathy and collective insight. It can be used to facilitate future conversations around workforce sustainability. The partnership broadly aims to undertake research to find solutions for improving workforce sustainability in the NHS. The tangible outputs - the co-created artwork, locally rooted vision and co-produced vision and values - will underpin our wider research and contribute to fostering a culture of collaboration between general practices and their patients. They will also contribute to our future dissemination and engagement activities (for example, as part of public or institutional displays or events), ensuring the lived experiences of staff and patients remain central to policy and practice discussions.

Exploring visual depiction of Autistic Young People’s Character Strengths use in everyday life: A Zine-Making Workshop study PI: Jiedi Lei Division: Medical Sciences Department: Department of Experimental Psychology

 Autistic young people (AYP) encounter deficit-focused autism narratives that can negatively impact their self-esteem and well-being. Media portrayals of autism often perpetuate unhelpful stereotypes of what “autistic strengths” should look like, and lack nuance. Our group’s research focuses on helping AYP to identify their strengths and abilities through exploring Character Strengths (CS): 24 universal traits, such as Curiosity, Creativity, and Bravery, that motivate us to take action in everyday life.

We will run workshops with AYP (age 12-21) to create Zines showcasing their unique CS. Zines are do-it-yourself publications giving voices to marginalized communities by sharing stories contrary to mainstream ideology. AYP in the workshop will be invited to: 1) Explore unhelpful stereotypes of autistic strengths depicted in mass media; 2) Learn about CS and compile examples of strengths in action; 3) Create individual “Zine” that illustrates personal stories of everyday CS use that can be curated into a group Zine to shift public perception of what meaningful strengths’ use in autistic young people’s lives might look like. Final Zine output will contribute to Zines on Disability Justice by Wellcome Collection, creating a lasting change through shaping public knowledge by empowering AYP to express their CS use in everyday life.

Global Encounters, colonial images of India by Eugene Clutterbuck Impey - a springboard to interpreting through multiple perspectives in school teaching engagement at the Ashmolean Museum

PI: Melanie Rowntree

Division: Gardens, Libraries & Museums

Department: Ashmolean Museum

The exhibition Colonial Views of India: Photographs by Eugene Clutterbuck Impey, curated by Professor Mallica Kumbera Landrus and based on her research, will open at the Ashmolean Museum in April 2026, accompanied by a publication of the same title. Objects and narratives from the exhibition and publication will act as a springboard to redevelop the Ashmolean’s Global Encounters secondary school session, piloting new ways to include multiple voices in the Museum’s schools offer by centring perspectives linked to colonised histories.

In partnership with Oxford’s BeUniq programme, workshops in Bradford schools will support pupils from Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities, empowering young people from historically under-represented communities to reinterpret colonial collections through their own perspectives. Oxford University student interns, chosen for their subject expertise, will collaborate with the Ashmolean’s Schools and University Engagement Team to reimagine the Global Encounters session, researching and developing creative interpretive responses to selected objects through participatory research with community knowledge keepers. 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.

Democratising global health research on a local level: Empowering a youth advisory group to co-create a community driven research agenda

PI: Elke Wynberg

Division: Medical Sciences

Department: Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU)

Global health research has often been conducted on rather than with communities in low-resource settings, limiting shared decision-making and reinforcing inequities in representation, trust, and scientific literacy. Research agendas are frequently determined by Global North institutions and funders. This top-down approach not only raises ethical concerns but also contributes to public disinterest and distrust in science, driving communities toward unregulated and unreliable health information sources such as social media.

To address these challenges, community engagement initiatives—particularly youth advisory groups—have shown promise in strengthening dialogue between researchers and local populations. Since 2021, the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU) in Bangkok has collaborated with local student partners in north-eastern Cambodia to establish the Youth Advisory Group on Health and Research Engagement (YAGHRE). This group works to promote community participation in health research procedures, education, and communication.

Building on encouraging initial outcomes, this project will expand YAGHRE’s role in Siem Pang district with two objectives: (1) co-developing a dynamic, community-informed research agenda that highlights local health priorities, and (2) mapping health information sources to guide effective health communication. These activities will strengthen YAGHRE’s capacity as agents of change and enhance equitable, community-led health research.