NEWS UPDATE: 27 MARCH 2023:
Deadlines, dates for your diaries and details of initiatives that may interest you. Welcome to our new PRME Intern – a joint appointment with UN Global Compact UK
Katie Lee is our first ever Chapter PRME Intern, supporting the chapter on the PRME I5 project and coordinating communications, marketing, and live events. In addition to her role at PRME UKI, she also works for the UN Global Compact Network UK in the participant engagement team, connecting with local network stakeholders. We hope this 50-50 joint appointment will help us achieve additional synergies between PRME and the UNGC, our UN host initiative. We would particularly like to thank Steve Kenzie (UNGC UK Executive Director) and Caterina Agnoletti (UNGC UK Operations Manager) for all their support in bringing this long-planned shared project to life.
Katie is a recent graduate in 2022 from the University of Edinburgh with an MA in Sustainable Development with Politics and International Relations. Previously, Katie has worked at the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, supporting policy and program work as an intern with the International Climate Finance Team. Katie is, to quote her own words, “passionate about promoting responsible business practices and driving sustainable development in corporate and academic setting and…. especially passionate about engaging young people and students in the pursuit of sustainable development and responsible business practices.”
Katie’s induction is currently underway and we are sure you will feel her influence on Chapter life very soon. Her post has been funded on the PRME side by a combination of Chapter funds and an I5 grant to the Chapter from PRME Global. The role is paid at the level of the London Living Wage.
SDG Teach-In – a last chance to sign up and contribute this week
We at PRME are sure that many of you are already supporting the SOS-UK SDG Teach-in taking place across the month of March. If you haven’t yet, then Make your pledge to incorporate the UN Sustainable Development Goals into your teaching, training, learning and assessments in this final week of March. So far 943 pledges have been made from 23 countries.
Our Induction/Onboarding session for new PRME Leads
On 9th March we offered our second and last onboarding session for PRME Leads in UK and Ireland signatories for this academic year. We were delighted to have some 30 people registered for the event, but if you missed it and would like to see the slide deck (also designed as an introduction to PRME for onward use in your own institution) then email the organiser, Laura Steele, on laura.steele@qub.ac.uk. These sessions will be repeated during academic year 2023-24.
Congratulations once again to the winners in the 2023 PRME Innovative Pedagogy Competition
The Innovative Pedagogy Competition was developed to encourage innovation, experimentation, and impact in PRME-related teaching. It also recognises the fact that financial barriers frequently exist that prevent individuals and groups from putting their ideas into practice. As the PRME UK and Ireland Chapter is celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2023, the competition featured an enhanced funding pot of £8,000. In addition to an open call, specific funding was available to support the development of the ‘PRME i5’ project, an innovative global initiative by PRME in collaboration with the LEGO Foundation. We received a large number of high-quality submissions addressing a wide range of relevant issues and we thank all applicants for their effort and interest. The following projects were awarded funding and we look forward to sharing their outputs with the PRME community in due course:
Open Category
· Dr Karen Cripps (Oxford Brookes Business School), Cathy d’Abreu (Oxford Brookes Business School), & Dr Milena Bobeva (Bournemouth University Business School), ‘Career Building for the Sustainable Development Goals: A Co-Created Masterclass’.
· Dr Ann-Christine Frandsen & Dr Anupam Mehta (Birmingham Business School), ‘Transforming Sustainability Pedagogy using Cartoon-Based Real-Life Case Studies: A Framework’.
· Dr Xinwu He (Queen’s Management School), ‘Understanding Sustainable Diet and Accounting for the SDGs’.
· Dr Pamela Yeow (Birkbeck, University of London), Dr Krish Saha (Birmingham City University), Dr Neil Pyper (Birkbeck, University of London), Professor Maharaj Vijay Reddy (Birmingham City University), & Christopher Cornell (Kent Country Council Coastal Waters Working Group & Southern Water Pathfinder Steering Group), ‘Marine Dumping on UK Coastlines: Raising Sustainability Awareness through a Stakeholder-Orientated Experiential Learning Approach’.
PRME i5 Category
· Dr Lucy Gill-Simmen (Royal Holloway University), Professor Sukanya Sen Gupta (Royal Holloway University), & Birungi Kawooya (Visiting Artist), ‘Self-Portraiture–Empowering Students to Make a Difference’.
· Dr Sean Tanner, Dr Conor Drummond, Dr Helen McGrath, Dr Michael Murphy, Dr Dave Alton, & Dr Tadgh Nagle (Cork University Business School), ‘Teach, Play, Learn, Repeat’.
Local Network Anniversary Year Events
As part of our Anniversary year, all our 7 local networks are organising events involving students and focused on food (SDG2) in some way. Here is a report on the London and SE Local Network contribution – that culminated on 22 February at Oxford Brookes University.
The London and South East network’s contribution was a three-part project on food waste. The project comprised of:
· An Instagram cooking competition aimed at students and based on using commonly wasted and/or leftover food.
· a hybrid expert panel discussion of community sustainable food system project partners
· research carried out into hospitality businesses approaches to food waste and food rescue, by a sustainability consultant project partner
The project addressed SDG 12 ‘Responsible Consumption and Production’ in examining food waste in individual and business contexts, alongside SDG 2 ‘Zero Hunger’ through highlighting the connection between food waste and money saving, in addition to communication on the role of community groups and initiatives such as food larders in enabling vulnerable people access to (healthy) food.
The Instagram cooking/recipe competition was run by students for students. The competition was open to any university across London and the South East (whether or not a PRME signatory), and therefore provided extensive outreach in increasing PRME’s profile. The aim was to raise awareness and understanding of what commonly wasted foods are, and how leftovers can be creatively re-purposed. A digital cooking competition (based on video and photo entries) was fun and original. The Instagram content was designed to be informational (in relation to why food waste is a problem in terms of wasted resources), aspirational (to show how positive contributions can be made to reducing environmental impact whilst also saving money), and engaging (through recipe and resource ideas). A total of 23 entries were received, across 5 universities (Oxford Brookes, Surrey, Sussex, Middlesex and Cranfield). There were three categories of winners with £100 per winner funded by the PRME Chapter (as in other Local Network competitions).
For a student TV report on the project, see here. For a full evaluation of what has been learnt from all three elements, contact the organiser, Dr Karen Cripps, on kcripps@brookes.ac.uk
Latest news on our 2023 Doctoral Colloquium and Annual Conference
Plans are progressing well for our 10th Anniversary Annual Conference to be held at Aston University (Birmingham) on Tuesday 27th and Wednesday 28th June 2023. As in the last two years, it will be preceded by a Doctoral Colloquium on Monday 26th June.
The call for proposals for both events was issued during February. Our closing date for proposals has been extended to Monday 17th April to enable you to prepare your abstract (Doctoral Colloquium) or ideas for a workshop or paper (Conference) over the spring break.
The organisers at Aston, led by Nathalie Ormrod, hope to launch the conference website and delegate/accommodation booking page in the week commencing 3rd April at the latest.
10th RME Research Conference – Lisbon, 26-28 September 2023
This 10th anniversary RME Research Conference is taking place in Lisbon, from 26th – 28th of September 2023. For those readers new to PRME, this is not a UKI Chapter initiative but they share a 10th Anniversary with us! You can find more information here . The call for contributions has been issued and a note from the organisers to the Chapter states, “We would like to draw your attention to track number 2 and 7. We would be really grateful if you would distribute the calls in your chapter. Especially track 7 is very important for us because we are in the process of setting up a project together with PRME to develop micro-credentials to reward outstanding educational approaches in sustainable management.”
20% discount offer on the Handbook of Carbon Management
Authors: Petra Molthan-Hill, Fiona Winfield, Richard Howarth and Muhammad Mazhar
Petra Molthan-Hill, Co-Chair of the PRME Working Group on Climate Change and Environment, has asked us to pass on this special offer:
20% Discount Available – enter the code EFL01 at checkout* * Offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer or discount and only applies to books purchased directly via the Routledge website. This code expires on 30 June 2023.
Order HERE
Chapter Events Calendar
If you’re organising a Chapter-related event or wanting to find out what is on, please remember to check our Chapter Events calendar. Additions can be emailed to our Administrator, Bryan Hall, on PRME_UKI@gcu.ac.uk
Items for future news updates
Local Network Co-ordinators, when you run a PRME event do send us a short report afterwards (with links to any relevant resources) for wider publicity through these newsletters.
If anyone would like us to include items in future news updates, please send them to our Secretariat - PRME_UKI@gcu.ac.uk
That’s it for now – best wishes from the UK and Ireland Chapter Steering Committee.
Comments