Research news

Staff Nurse and Open University graduate Bernadette Guthrie has been shortlisted for a Nursing Times Student Award.

A new project, led by the Social History of Learning Disability (SHLD) Research Group, launched last week.  Surviving Through Story will collect and archive the stories of people with learning disabilities through the pandemic.

With face-coverings now mandatory in many indoor settings across the UK, will we need to find new ways of communicating?

The OU and The University of Oxford have been awarded £900,000 by the National Institute for Health (NIHR) to investigate how to improve support for older people with learning disabilities and their family carers. The project is funded through a specific call issued by the NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research (HS&DR) programme for studies of community health and care services.

An Open University research team led by Dr Jitka Vseteckova, Knowledge Exchange & Enterprise Lead for the School of Health, Wellbeing and Social Care (HWSC), are working with The Parks Trust, an independent charity caring for over 6,000 acres of parkland and green space in Milton Keynes, to evaluate a new walking programme initiative for people living with dementia and their informal carers and families.

Following the recent Reading Together Day initiative, the OU’s Reading for Pleasure programme, led by Professor Teresa Cremin, has partnered with The Reading Agency to launch a Teachers’ Reading Challenge this summer. Due to launch on 14 August, the initiative aims to create a community for teachers to share their thoughts and recommendations on children’s literature.

A new landmark citizen science project – COVID-19 and Me, has been launched on the OU’s citizen science platform, nQuire. Delivered in partnership with The Young Foundation, the project aims to capture the social impact of coronavirus on individuals and communities across the UK.

John Oates, Professor of Developmental Psychology, is lead author for the new guidance entitled ‘Research  Ethics Support and Review in Research Organisations’, which launched this month.

Dr Kristina Hultgren has been awarded a prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, for over £1.1mn, to explore why the use of English as a teaching language in non-English-speaking European countries is increasing, despite students struggling to understand it.

Shaped by research from Professor of Social Policy Research Dr Lesley Hoggart, and Senior Research Fellow Dr Victoria Newton, The Open University (OU) has partnered with sexual health and wellbeing experts Brook in delivering an online course supporting teachers in providing abortion education in schools. The free training is designed to improve the knowledge and confidence of those teaching about pregnancy decision-making and abortion to young people aged 13+.