Awarded Projects 2025-26

Public Engagement Co-Creation with Students Fund

Awarded Projects 2025-26

The Public Engagement Co-Creation with Students Fund is a new fund launched in 2025-26 to support collaboration between staff and students on public engagement projects.

This fund was open two times during 2025-2026. The first round of funding was awarded at the end of 2025 and projects began in early 2026. The second round of funding was awarded in early 2026 and project began in April/May 2026. On this page, you can read about the projects.

Aims of this fund

To provide students with paid employment and development opportunities in the field of public engagement.
To enable students to learn about public engagement as a two-way process between people inside and outside universities.
To support staff with the development of their public engagement projects.

Check out reflections from the student co-creators here!

Developing a training resource for community Health Champions

Kezia Davies and Barbara Pitruzzella with Kate Owen (WMS) and Mohamed Alobeid (CRMC)

This project is a partnership between WMS and Coventry Refugee and Migrant Centre (CRMC) to develop community "Health Champions" to work within their local communities to improve health literacy relating to UK health services and provide health promotion in line with the new NHS strategy. The six-session training program is developed in partnership with the Health Champions (HCs) who are all refugees and migrants themselves.

This funding was used to employ two students to work with the Health Champions on developing activities for the training course.

Developing engagement activities about soil artificialisation and wildlife

Laura Cole and Harriet Pickering with Ariane Demeure-Ahearne (SMLC) and Lou Sarabadzic (writer)

The project aims at engaging a range of audiences in our communities (students, children and adults) in creative and positive conversations about reducing soil artificialisation and protecting wildlife. The stimulus of the activities will be the poetic manifesto ‘Seul le Sol’ that the writer Lou Sarabadzic published in a French children’s book in 2024.

This funding was used to employ two students to collaborate on translating the poem and on co-designing engagement activities.

Developing engagement activities about palaeontology

Callie Jey Wilson and Ellen Joanna Mann with Daniel Cashmore (WP)

Fossils can spark the imagination, and they can be a fantastic platform to engage younger audiences with scientific discovery and methodologies. The evolution of life on this planet and where our species fits within this is fundamental context to many other scientific fields.

This funding was used to employ two students to develop engagement activities for children and young people on the topic of evolution.

Developing engagement activities about AI

Hesam Khajehsaeid and Fatemeh Shahbazi (WMG) with two student co-creators

This project aims to reduce the public-AI knowledge gap by providing hands-on AI co-creation experiences for the local community. Participants will engage directly with AI tools to generate ideas, artworks, and problem-solving concepts, experiencing AI as a collaborative partner rather than an abstract or threatening technology. The project will collect pre- and post-event public perception to measure changes in public understanding, trust, and confidence in AI.

This funding was used to employ two student co-creators, who helped design the engagement experience by developing evaluation surveys, communication materials, and accessible public-facing guides.

Developing engagement activities about online scams

Sehar Jaggi and Minahil Butt with Michaela Gummerum and Pip Brown (Psychology)

This project aims to find out what young people’s experiences of online scams are, and then to develop public engagement materials and activities to inform young people and the general public about online scams and how to identify and resist them.

This funding was used to employ two students to contribute to both stages of the project.

Developing the 'Alternative Lifeworlds' reader for the Transformations Programme

Bethany Hadinham and Gemma Rice with Charlotte Pearce (ECLS)

This project is situated within the English and Comparative Literary Studies’ (ECLS) Transformations programme, a Widening Participation project where tutor teams (of students from the department) visit local secondary schools to provide after-school creative writing lessons. These lessons focus on the theme of the specific reader selected by the partner school.

This funding was used to employ two students to create a cohesive and polished ‘Alternative Lifeworlds’ reader which will support the teaching of the Transformations tutor teams from next academic year onwards and for future Resonate events

Creating digital public engagement materials for the 'Can Digital Goods be Neutral?' project

Kavisha Dodanwala and Dana McCutcheon with Timothy Monteath & Carlos Cámara-Menoyo (CIM)

This project promotes digital equity by empowering members from under-represented communities to co-produce data visualisations and tools that examine and challenge the impact of neutrality as a guiding principle in a particular and relevant case of digital good: OpenStreetMap [OSM].

This funding was used to employ two students to collate material and build a public engagement website from the research that can continue to used for public engagement.

Your project here?

The Public Engagement Co-Creation with Students Fund will reopen again in the 2026-27 academic year.

Full details of the fund and application process can be found here.

If you'd like to be the first to know when the fund reopens, then why not become a Member of Warwick Institute of Engagement?