External Relations Forum at the School for Business and Society

Event details

Please join us at this hybrid event to hear from colleagues across the School and University who have been leading on impactful external initiatives and engagements. The forum will showcase the diversity of experiences we have at York on engagements locally and nationally across a range of sectors. It will provide an opportunity to learn from those who have been spearheading some highly inspirational work and to ask them questions about their work and experiences.

Experiences of leading a ‘research partnership’ with a major UK homecare provider

Professor Bryony Beresford

Professor Bryony Beresford is an applied health and care services researcher working on issues related to health/social care policy, service organisation, delivery and practice across the life-course. Based in the Social Policy Research Unit within the School, much of her work is funded by the government’s National Institute for Health and Care Services Research (NIHR). She is currently leading a research partnership with Home Instead, one of the UK’s largest homecare franchise companies and part of a global homecare brand. Within social care, investment in independent research by the private sector is novel but this partnership has delivered high impact outputs. Much of her research involves multi-disciplinary collaborations with academics and service providers/professionals and all her studies include a significant public involvement/engagement strand.

Engagements with Policy-makers and Food Industry in the UK

Professor Sonal Choudhary

Professor Sonal Choudhary joined the School for Business and Society, at the University of York, UK as a Chair in Sustainable Management in October 2021. Prior to this, she was the Head of Operations Management and Decision sciences (OMDS) Research Centre at The Sheffield University Management School (SUMS). She is currently leading the £1.2m funded UKRI-STFC Food Network+ which brings together 1500+ members from academia, food industry and policy making from across 25+ countries to address different challenges within the global food systems through interdisciplinary research. This project is the first of its kind which brings social science researchers to work with researchers from data science, cutting-edge technologies and physics related large lab facilities for co-designing projects with challenge-owners (industry and policy makers). Sonal has worked on both policy-commission and industry-commissioned projects through this network+. Following the success of this network+ model, she is now one of the eight NERC Future Leader council members where she is responsible for delivering £1.5m for interdisciplinary research through network+ model of engagements.

StreetLife York: Coney Street as a Catalyst for Community Renewal

Elizabeth Holling

Lizzy joined the University of York in 2021 as the project manager of the UK Community Renewal Funded ‘StreetLife’ project, which explored new ways to revitalise and diversify one of York’s busiest high streets through heritage and creativity. She currently manages the legacy strands of activity that use the StreetLife Hub as incubator space and has co-founded the York Centre for Print, opening in the summer of 2023. Prior to this, she worked as the marketing manager at a software development company for start-ups. Her research background focuses on using practice-based work to preserve endangered craft techniques and promote the history of print and design.

The Scottish Financial Risk Academy: knowledge exchange with the financial sector

Professor Alexander McNeil

Alexander McNeil has been Professor of Actuarial Science at the University of York since September 2016. Educated at Imperial College London and Cambridge University, he was formerly Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at ETH Zurich and Maxwell Professor of Mathematics in the Department of Actuarial Mathematics and Statistics at Heriot-Watt University. He founded and led the Scottish Financial Risk Academy (SFRA) between 2010 and 2016. He is joint author of the book "Quantitative Risk Management: Concepts, Techniques and Tools", published by Princeton University Press (2005/2015). He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and a Corresponding Member of the Swiss Association of Actuaries.

What can we learn from local small businesses about supporting workforce mental health?

Dr Bob Townley

Dr Bob Townley is Director of Postgraduate Programmes at the University of York, School for Business and Society and External Examiner to the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust. He is also a highly experienced research and evaluation consultant, specialising in work, skills, diversity, mental health, leadership and organisations. Over the past 25 years he has worked in association with various research consultancies including Wavehill Ltd, CERI (Kingston University), LEPU (South Bank University), York Consulting and GLE Strategies and has also led Research and Evaluation programmes at a London Learning and Skills Council and the Sector Skills Council for the Creative Industries.

In the past three years (2019-2022) he has completed work with North Yorkshire County Council, the Further Education Trust for Leadership (FETL), a project with the SIMRA partnership to explore and address issues of migration across the EU - building on his PhD research on change, loss and mourning in organisations - and an evaluation the SAFE (unaccompanied children) project for the British Red Cross.

Enactus York: supporting the local community

Enactus York

Enactus York is part of the global organisation, Enactus UK, which aims to encourage young people's engagement in social action and to help develop their entrepreneurial skills. We are part of a large Enactus community, with half of the universities across England having their own Enactus branch. Enactus York is led by students at the University of York and has set up projects in the local community, which are beneficiary focused, and aims to address the needs of that community. We currently have four different projects that each address different needs (poverty and single mum, refugees, youth and the digital divide and elderly people in care homes).

Join the Zoom