Bright IDEAS is a framework to encourage students to focus their research on Impactful Dissertations for Environment And Sustainability.
Many student have the opportunity to work on a final year dissertation or project. Imagine what difference we could make id the academic community focused its collective brainpower on real-world climate, biodiversity and sustainability challenges?
A recent study reported that the majority of academics are concerned about climate change and want to be able to do something. Other studies have shown that large numbers of students share similar concerns – they want to make a difference.
Universities have an unrivalled breadth of expertise and scale that could be decisive in addressing the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss. Bright IDEAS is an initiative that aims to harness some of the intellectual firepower and broad societal influence of universities and focus it on environment and sustainability.
How Does Bright IDEAS Work?
The basic principle is that organisations developing environmental policy are able to present their evidence needs and research questions.
We will then make the questions and challenges available to students and their supervisors who are seeking to deliver impactful final year projects and/or dissertations.
Students can choose to register for one of the evidence needs questions, or develop their own environment or sustainability themed project with their project supervisor.
The students, in collaboration with their project supervisor, will develop their research project which, when completed, can be uploaded to the Bright IDEAS library, making it available to those raising the initial question as well as students who may wish to build upon the research with projects in subsequent years.
Given the severe public resource constraints we are aiming to maintain the flow of research evidence so that environmental policy decisions can still be made, influenced by the contribution of students across the country.
Our ambition is that not only will we achieve environmental change through the project, but participating graduates, across all subject areas, will strengthen and expand their awareness of climate change and biodiversity issues. They will then carry that knowledge into their future careers influencing colleagues and employers along the way.
Participating students will connect with real-life issues of concern to society and address challenges raised by organisations, with whom they make seek employment in future. Being able to cite involvement in Bright IDEAS in CVs and job applications may give our participating students the edge in recruitment processes.
Current Research Challenges
Click on the buttons below in order to find research questions of interest:
See also:
1 in 5 Project | Cardiff & Partners; 1in5 Project | Bristol University
Living Labs | Aberystwyth University
Living Lab at Cardiff University – coming soon
Living Lab | The University of Manchester
Living Labs | Edinburgh University
Students – Get your certificate of participation!
