At Bristol, our RRI work is practical, applied, and rooted in the practice of public engagement. We have reflected on what RRI means for the way we approach our own engagement work, and developed a practitioner-led approach.

We build the learning from these projects back into the support and training we deliver to researchers at Bristol. We also aim to share our learning with researchers, partners, funders, and the wider research impact sector. But what have we learnt?

The value of working with creative practitioners to open up new conversations and build community

On the European Commission-funded project Synenergene, we developed a theatre production to engage young people with the topic of synthetic biology and its applications. We partnered with BrisSynBio and Kilter Theatre, who together developed the play Invincible. Audience members were immersed in a future world where synthetic biology was common, with characters to invest in and a narrative to follow. This led to deep and nuanced conversations about the societal implications of the research amongst all involved: researchers, cast, young people and other audiences. The development process itself also provided opportunity for conversation about the impact of research, further highlighting the value of the arts in provide these reflective spaces.

Building on this project, we developed an RRI Residential with BrisSynBio. Working with artist collective ONCE, researchers collaborated with artists to explore new perspectives on responsibility in science. Stepping outside the researchers’ comfort zones, the process sparked new conversations and approaches to research. The cohort also developed a strong sense of community and continued to meet up beyond the project, for support in navigating issues of responsibility in their work.

Researchers need support and training to embed RRI principles in their work

Academics need opportunities, time, resource, reward and recognition to develop their skills in RRI. We explored this need in the European Commission-funded project PERFORM, which created a training programme for early career researchers and teachers, and corresponding toolkits. The project explored topics including the philosophy of science, ethics, replicability, and public engagement. Researchers were given time and space to regularly get together for workshops and discussion.

We used further internal funding to pull together our learning from PERFORM and other projects to develop a training module for  researchers. Working with Kilter Theatre and Debbie Nicol (PhD, Chemistry) to develop the training, it aimed to take researchers through the basics of introducing reflexivity into their work. Six themes were covered across six sessions: your perspective (how who you are shapes what you do), future thinking, diversity, responsibility towards the environment, wellbeing, and ethical considerations of your research across six sessions. A toolkit was produced to allow the training to be scaled up beyond this project. 

If you talk the talk, you must walk the walk

When working on the PERFORM project, we realised we could not feasibly encourage researchers to apply RRI principles to their work without also applying them to our own work as a team of Public Engagement Professionals. This always throws up challenges in budgeting, time and resource, but making this effort opened our eyes to the need to be critically reflective of our own responsibilities in the project, and how we worked together. One of the outcomes of this work is to start collaborative projects with the process of writing a manifesto about how we want to work together. This include considering responsibility and care towards the researchers we work with, towards the environment and towards each other.

RRI is internal- and external-focused

For our team, there is a strong link between  RRI and Public Engagement. While the reflection that is encouraged through RRI practice may initially be internal (a researcher thinking about their research within the higher education environment) it is important for researchers to bring different voices into their research at different stages, to discuss potential impacts and consider the kind of futures that we want to create together.

To facilitate engaging members of the public to reflect on the impacts of research, we have developed two new public engagement methodologies in collaboration with our creative partners Kilter Theatre: Reverse Think Tank and Walk the Talk.

Facilitated time/spaces make it easier for researchers to reflect on the impact of their projects in constructive and supportive settings

Finding time to engage with RRI principles amongst busy research and teaching schedules can be challenging. We know that reflective practices can be easier for researchers to engage with when they have some blocked time out and a facilitated activity to frame this work around.

Research projects can really benefit from creating spaces for reflection. Taking part in reflective exercises can identify elements within a research project that could be improved or done differently, or even to notice aspects that hadn’t previously been considered. We saw this in Re-Cognition, a European Horizon-funded project bringing together researchers and engineers in industry. Those involved were challenged to reflect on the positive and negative impacts of future environmental technologies. Through this, the group identified planning gaps around their pilot sites, where new technology would be embedded and tested. The project team realised there were no plans for what would happen to these pilot sites and associated tech beyond the timeline of the project. This realisation allowed the team to develop solutions and put a plan in place for the longevity of the sites beyond the immediate pilot phase.

The power of facilitated activities in bringing researchers together as a community

While working with PhD students on RRI projects, and encouraging them to imagine potential futures, we encountered many researchers voicing worry and concern about the climate and ecological crises.

In response, we set up Resilience Through Nature. Funded by the University Research Culture Fund, PhD students from different disciplines were brought together to spend time in nature and have space to discuss and express their feelings about the future.

During the project the researchers spent time outdoors working on creative activities with an artist, collaborating together, and engaging in structured discussion. All this allowed the group to get into conversations about the ‘larger than self’ stuff, exploring what aspects of the climate and ecological crises they had some control over and where they felt able to take action.

Those involved reported a need for more spaces like this to share thoughts and feelings about big topics. To combat isolation when considering the future, we can also facilitate researchers to reflect in supportive and constructive settings that build community.