Case study
Safe Web Space for Children
Professor Sonia Livingstone's research UK Children Go Online has had a substantial impact on the design of safeguards to protect children from harmful material on the internet, as well as exposing how much young people are exposed to such material. Based on her research, Microsoft developed educational material which they distributed to every secondary school. Virtual Global Taskforce, an alliance of law enforcement agencies working to prevent online child abuse, also used her work in their public safety materials. The findings have been used by the Home Secretary's Task Force for Child Protection on the Internet to review self regulation procedures, including the forthcoming guidelines on social networking for children.
Strategic Objectives
Impact through World Class Research
To maximise impact it is essential to stimulate creativity and adventure in research. This involves encouraging innovative theory and research methods across the social sciences and requires investment in both fundamental and applied research.
Our aim is also to support new and dynamic interdisciplinary research where it has the potential to drive forward breakthrough science or provide powerful innovative insights into complex applied problems. As part of this, extending partnerships with other Research Councils to embed social science at the heart of all collaborative work will be key, particularly in the existing cross-council research challenges.
In addition to supporting research on our own key research challenges, we will continue to fund outstanding social science within all areas of our remit. As well as investing in new high impact research, we will, through mechanisms such as the Follow on Fund, work to exploit and optimise the impact of the research which we have already supported.
Given the global context in which we live, it is important to promote more internationally focussed research, helping us to develop a deeper understanding of the wider world and greater knowledge of how that impacts on the UK.
Forming strong partnerships with key stakeholders in the public, private and third sectors is also essential to maximising the impact of our research. It will allow us to co-produce research with other stakeholders and disseminate research outcomes direct for optimal impact. Our aim is to deepen and extend what is already an excellent track record. In recent years we have established an impressive number of collaborative research initiatives with a wide range of partners through our collaborative Ventures funding.These include, for example, the Wellcome Trust, Hewlett Foundation, Cancer Research UK, the TSB, and an extensive number of Government Departments.
Individual researchers must also maximise the impact of their research and the ESRC will support them in this by, for example, building on the early success of the Follow on Fund, which provides targeted funding for research impact. All researchers will be encouraged to demonstrate how they will generate impact through active engagement with a wide range of stakeholders during the lifetime of their grant. User engagement strategies will be more directly assessed through the application process.
Future priorities
By 2014 the ESRC will have:
- Actively extended innovative research across all our modes of funding
- Driven forward exciting new interdisciplinary research, particularly through the deep integration of social science across the RCUK research challenges
- Expanded the impact of our research beyond the academic community through extending our portfolio of collaborative initiatives
- Enhanced the impact of individual grants, by placing greater emphasis on user engagement in our application and assessment procedures
- Strengthened the capacity to undertake international research, through initiatives to enhance comparative research methods.