Pilot Event for a Youth Advisory Board

Earlier this month, 55 A-level students from four Swindon catchment secondary schools visited the Department of Sociology to participate in the inaugural event for a Youth Advisory Board (YAB). During this three-month pilot, Sociology researchers will have the opportunity to engage with this age group for knowledge exchange and public engagement with research (PER) activities. The scheme also gives A-level students an exciting opportunity to learn more about the field of sociology, including meeting our world-leading researchers to discover what they research and why.  

Students participated in project groups in the afternoon

The YAB will provide project teams and researchers with a cost effective, ready-made conduit for knowledge exchange and PER, and as such can be used to strengthen funding applications by helping to embed these activities into the fabric of prospective research projects. If the pilot is successful, we hope to recruit another cohort of students in Michaelmas Term.

We thoroughly enjoyed hosting this event and would like to thank all those who facilitated and took part. Thank you to all the students who joined us (we were very impressed with the level of engagement and curiosity demonstrated!) and we hope this is the start of many more successful YAB events to come.  

Get Involved 

If you work for a school and would like further information about participating in a future YAB event, please contact our divisional Research Impact Facilitator, Sam Harper. 

If you are a researcher in the Department of Sociology, and would like to know more or participate in future events, please contact Sam Harper or the department’s Research Facilitator, Agnieszka Swiejkowska.