Small Public Engagement Grants

Awarded 2024-25

Project Lead: Niranjana Ramesh (School of Geography)

Contrary to received wisdom, the hearth – or spaces of making and eating food – had a fraught relationship with notions of home and belonging. In South Asia and among its diaspora, this relationship was often mediated by caste and, relatedly, by gender, religion, language, and other technologies of bordering. This project explored this tension through a sensorial lens, using smells and taste to examine how particular identities and politics of self were translated across oceans via food. It took the form of an event centred on a collaborative coastal community cookbook, Seasoned by the Sea (315 pages, Uyir Publications, Chennai), produced with external funding from the Antipode ‘Right to the Discipline’ grant.

Given the book’s focus on Tamil coastal food and its bilingual format in English and Tamil, the event was targeted at publics with a degree of familiarity with Tamil, whether through language or heritage, while also inviting engagement from the wider South Asian diaspora (for example, Bangla-speaking communities). In London, this included communities tracing their geographical ancestry not only to South Asia (India and Sri Lanka) but also across the Indian Ocean world (for example, Malaysia and South Africa), thereby expanding the scope of discussion to themes ranging from borders to environmental change, loss of foodways, and trans-oceanic connections — all of which were addressed in the book. Of particular interest was the notion of translation — of the written word, recipes, foodways, and cultures to an external geographical location and audience.

A focus on Tamil communities in London was pertinent in the context of their increasing public visibility, particularly in East London, where the Stratford & Bow constituency was represented by an MP of Tamil origin and QMUL alumna. Academically, the event addressed the under-studied ‘multiple partitions’ in the Indian Ocean world beyond the terrestrial and territorial partition of the Indian subcontinent, which rightly received significant attention in British popular discourse.

The event featured discussions on these themes by invited speakers, including popular writers, artists, and food sector workers. This served two purposes: to encourage participation from a wider audience who might otherwise perceive academic discussions as inaccessible, and to draw insights from popular artists whose work had arguably advanced farther than academia in connecting food to a range of profound themes. To support accessibility and cultural relevance, the event was held at a community venue outside the university, such as in Lewisham or East Ham, where there were significant Tamil communities. The sensorial exploration at the heart of the event was complemented by culturally appropriate catering, preferably from a Tamil-owned food business.

The overarching aim was to initiate an overdue conversation around food and ecologies of caste in London, informed by research on coastal environments, foodways, and sensorial geographies. The event contributed to the future research agenda on Indian Ocean geographies while simultaneously advancing public scholarship and knowledge exchange in London.

Awarded 2024-25

Project Lead: Alison Blunt (School of Geography)

This project involved public engagement and scoping research 

in response to a challenge set by Stephen Timms MP following a visit to meet the civic and public affairs teams at QM.

In a letter following this visit, Stephen Timms asked:
"How can we best maintain the liveliness of East Ham High Street? What can be done about the crime problems? Should the perennial demand of shopkeepers for more parking be granted? Should buses still run down the High Street or should it be traffic free? How can it be made more attractive to families? It would be most interesting to have attempts at answering these and other questions – I could readily draw together an interested group of residents and shopkeepers to support the work" (1 February 2025).

The engagement activity involved approximately 76 hours of work over an eight-week period in May and June 2025 (match-funded by the HSS Student Research Bursary) and included:

• Meeting with Stephen Timms to understand the wider context of East Ham High Street and priorities for its revitalisation.

• Convening two workshops with residents and shopkeepers brought together by Stephen Timms to explore their priorities and concerns about the high street and to develop a plan for larger-scale public and community engagement (application pending for STRIDE; future grant applications planned).

• Delivering engagement activities in these workshops, including mapping current and future uses of the High Street, conducting persona exercises about different users of the high street and barriers they might face, and undertaking stakeholder mapping.

• Producing a short report summarising the initial engagement work, which informed a larger programme of future work in East Ham and across other East London high streets.

Awarded: 2024-25

Project Lead: Harry Pape (QMSU Sport)

A local project was delivered in which QMSU Sport provided children and young people in Tower Hamlets with access to experienced student coaches through QMSU’s Sports Employability Academy. These coaches facilitated free sports and physical activity sessions within a range of local organisations, including primary and secondary schools, colleges, grassroots sports clubs, housing associations, and community centres. Qualitative data was collected continuously throughout the year from students, local residents, and external organisations on the effect of these free sessions on the mental health of both participants and enablers.

Tower Hamlets had been identified through research as a traditionally underrepresented and underfunded community. In 2023, government research into the Tower Hamlets population found that children in the local community were highly likely to be deprived, with a significant need for support services such as access to health and educational resources.

Awarded: 2023-24

Project Leads: Elizabeth Renfry (William Harvey Research Institute)

Queen Mary University of London and the University of Newcastle are joint leads of the AI MULTIPLY consortium. This large, interdisciplinary, and multi-method project aimed to explore the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to characterise and predict the health journeys of people living with multiple long-term conditions and taking multiple medications. Over an 18-month period, Social Action for Health supported a group of 20 people to act as active public and patient involvement and engagement (PPIE) contributors to the research. This included running a series of art workshops that enabled participants to share their lived experiences and build confidence in contributing to PPIE. The intention was to display the artwork from these workshops, alongside a striking “visual minutes” piece of art, in a community art exhibition.

Social Action for Health, a community-based charity, provided free services and support to equip communities across east London to manage their health, improve wellbeing, and make positive decisions for themselves, their families, and their community. One way this was facilitated was by engaging communities most affected by health inequalities in academic research. This ensured that those with the most to gain from high-quality research were key contributors to the conversation, learnings, and recommendations.

The community art exhibition was designed to showcase the artwork created by PPIE contributors to friends and family of the exhibitors, as well as to AI MULTIPLY researchers and the wider community in Tower Hamlets. This created an opportunity for a wider range of voices to participate in ongoing conversations about living with multiple health conditions and the role of AI in healthcare. Funding enabled the artworks to be mounted and displayed attractively at Oxford House (which agreed to host the exhibition at a reduced cost) and supported the hosting of a small launch event for interested members of the public, professionals, and researchers. The funding also covered attendance costs for PPIE members and provided bilingual (Bengali/Sylheti) community engagement workers to attend and support the event, ensuring that this cohort of the PPIE group and the Tower Hamlets community were able to engage and participate fully.

The exhibition aligned closely with QMUL’s civic agreement and took AI research in healthcare to an audience who might not otherwise have had the opportunity to engage with it. It also supported the group and the wider community in recognising that their knowledge and contributions were valued, and that their involvement informed research which, in turn, left the community stronger.