Learning inequalities during Covid-19 pandemic
Dr Nicola Pensiero, Prof. Anthony Kelly, and Dr Christian Bokhove's research focuses on estimating the educational loss for children during Covid-19.
Public Policy|Southampton's (PPS) partnership with Sense About Science (SaS) on Evidence Week
Since 2018, Public Policy|Southampton (PPS) is partnering with Sense About Science on Evidence Week. The aim of this partnership is to bring parliamentarians and researchers from the University of Southampton together to champion the use of high quality research to develop policy, enrich parliamentarians’ understanding of key policy issues and develop researchers’ capacity to engage with policy makers.
Evidence Week in Parliament (16-20 November 2020)- Online Event
The 3 research projects that had been selected to represent the University of Southampton during the Evidence Week 2020 were:
Nursing interventions - what works?
Researchers from the University of Southampton, University of Surrey, King's College London and University of East Anglia are collaborating to support nursing teams and prevent poor care.
PERSO
Researchers from the University of Southampton have developed a prototype personal respirator called ‘PeRSo’, to support doctors and nurses during Covid-19.
Delivering Evidence Week via a virtual platform, during the pandemic, has come with its challenges. However, 190 people signed up to the Brella platform, including 50 MPs, Lords, their staff and key civil servants. On Tuesday 17th and Wednesday 18th between 12-4 researchers from the University of Southampton had the opportunity to schedule meetings directly with MPs or with the Parliamentary Assistants and to inform them about the research findings as well as the policy implications of their projects.
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Previous Evidence Week events:
The most successful events during previous Evidence Weeks involved providing MPs, peers and parliamentary staff with access to a wide range of data at the Upper Waiting Hall exhibition stand, with a promise of being able to learn something useful in just a few minutes. Research relating to prominent and complex policy areas (such as climate change, big data or ‘wicked’ social policy problems) was a particular draw, as was research that could be broken down by constituency or region.
In June 2019 more than 100 MPs and peers got involved in Evidence Week in the UK Parliament. University of Southampton was represented by two Evidence Pods featuring 'Drones and Noise' with Dr Rod Self and 'Smart Charging for Electric Vehicles using AI' with Dr Sebastian Stein and Dr Enrico Gerding. Dr Rod Self gave evidence that drones could be flying in urban locations within a few years. He explained the need for research towards effective control, economic benefit and the looming political problem if the ground rules are not speedily set. Dr Sebastian Stein and Dr Enrico Gerding discussed how artificial intelligence can manage vehicle charging in a smart way within existing infrastructure and to turn electric vehicles into smart batteries (vehicle-to-grid).
In 2018 Sense about Science delivered the first ever Evidence Week in the UK Parliament. The event was a joint initiative with the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, the House of Commons Library and the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. The topic of discussion was air pollution and Dr Matt Loxham from the University of Southampton was invited to explain the research behind air quality to MPs and Peer and some of the misconceptions that surrounds it.