Building fairer societies
Find out how our research strives to improve understanding about social inequality and its effect on people’s life chances.
Achieving a world in which opportunities and wealth are distributed fairly among people regardless of geographical location, race, class, sexuality or gender, has never felt more urgent.
Universities have an important role to play not only in providing educational opportunities that can transform individual lives but by helping society better navigate these complex issues using evidence and expertise to generate the knowledge that can help drive change.
What we’re doing
At Edinburgh, we have communities of researchers, across social sciences, law, medicine, and data science, working with governments, NGOs and communities to inform the solutions and strategies which can improve people’s lives.
Here is just a selection of some of the projects we’re delivering.
Academic research can play an important role in shaping the policies and decision making that seeks to reduce social inequality, but too often that research fails to involve those communities and individuals who are most affected by social injustice.
The Binks Hub, founded by the generosity of the Binks Trust, plans to pioneer more collaborative research methods, creating research with communities in Scotland who have experience of poverty and inequality. Researchers at the Binks Hub hope to identify models for co-creation that can be used in a range of community settings to generate social research that makes a direct impact on the lives of people living in Scotland, and beyond.
The University of Edinburgh is working with UNICEF and the Scottish Government to use data science to improve outcomes for children globally. The Data for Children Collaborative with UNICEF, part of Edinburgh’s Data-Driven Innovation programme, aims to deliver research projects that generate actionable insights. Project themes will be guided by the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and will explore some of the biggest health, safety and wellbeing challenges that children and young people around the world face.
Find out more about the Collaborative
Edinburgh has also partnered with the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children to use data-led research to help us understand how to protect children better. Violence against children is a multi-faceted problem with causes at individual, community and society levels. It has lifelong impacts on the health and wellbeing of children and their families but it can be prevented.
The End Violence Lab works with partner countries and cities to better understand the drivers behind violence against children and use that data and insight to inform violence prevention strategies.
Work with us
If you are interested in supporting our research in this area, or would like to talk to us in more detail about how you can get involved with some of the work we’re doing, please get in touch.