When fellow countrymen win a medal at an international sports event the whole spectrum of positive and negative emotions is expressed, by athletes, spectators, even by the strongest sports-critics and sports-indifferent people. There are winners and losers, fans for and against, sadness and disillusionment, abuse and injustice, grief and pain but there is also fair play, empathy, integrity, joy and optimism. In this essay, I write about abuses, dangers and challenges in sport, what causes the...

Engaged Learning enables students to apply theory to a context outside of the University by addressing societal concerns, challenges or needs, while producing knowledge in an equitable, mutually beneficial partnership. Through participating in Engaged Learning, students develop self-efficacy and enhance their employability, while local communities benefit from the skills and knowledge of a supervised student researcher.

The central aim of the Communities and Students Together (CaST) project i...

The ‘Evaluation and Mentoring of the Multi-Agency approach to violent radicalization’ (EMMA) project was established (1) to evaluate the multi-agency working approach and (2) to mentor peer-to-peer assessment and exchange best practices among local practitioners. The EMMA project tried to fill this gap in evaluation research by developing a self-evaluation tool for local multi-agency working practitioners that will be widely applicable across different multi-agency working approaches in E...

There are growing calls for Higher Education Institutions to become more civically engaged and socially relevant in their local regions. The central aim of the Communities and Students Together (CaST) project has been to advance our knowledge and understanding of the myriad forms of Engaged Learning and to develop a deeper understanding of engagement. The project highlighted the diversity and flexibility to be found within Engaged Learning initiatives in each of the participating universities...