Café Scientifique, Tuesday 6^th November at 7.00pm, The Fastest Men On No Legs: Oscar Pistorius, prosthetic limbs & the role of technology in elite sport – Bryce Dyer. Café Boscanova, Bournemouth. For more information, click here

ESRC Festival of Social Science:  Bournemouth University is hosting an unprecedented four events!

Monday 5^th November, London 2012: Was it Worth It? Interactive event for young people to review the impact of the Olympic and Paralympic Games both locally and nationally.

Wednesday 7^th November, Pathways to Impact: ageing, diversity, connectivity and community ESRC Festival of Social Science launch of the National Lottery funded Methods to Diversity and a chance to see the award–winning short film, Rufus Stone

Thursday 8^th November: What Constitutes Evidence for Copyright Policy? This interactive event offers the opportunity for discussion on evidence for copyright policy between social scientists, policy–makers and producers and users of copyright works.

Friday 9^th November: Going For Gold: Leveraging Post Olympic Tourism Legacies. In the post-Olympic Games period, this workshop will explore the extent to which the 2012 Games remains able to deliver global networks to support tourism promotion overseas, to engage industry and government in supporting the growth of the visitor economy, and to maximise the impact of public investment in tourism.

Dates for the diary

25^th January, 2013 – Multiculturalism and After: Has multiculturalism provided a durable ideal upon which a cohesive and tolerant society can be built? Or has it failed? This half-day conference will provide an opportunity to reflect upon the future of cultural difference in Britain – how do we experience it, what policy agendas does it call for, how can it be a source of creativity and dynamism within a positive national identity? Speakers include:

–        Prof. Ted Cantle CBE, founder of the Institute of Community Cohesion, will talk about ‘Interculturalism’, his new book which proposes a new paradigm for social integration.

–        David Aaronovitch, The Times columnist and author.

–        Jamie Bartlett, Head of the Violence and Extremism Programme at DEMOS.

Please contact Prof Barry Richards for further details.

Public engagement activities further afield

If you are out of town, it is festival season! Check out the fantastic activities at Manchester Science Festival or Cambridge Festival of Ideas.

Public engagement opportunities

–        Registrations for this year’s FameLab are still open! This is a really exciting competition to discover the new leading voice of science and engineering across the world and is designed to inspire young scientists and engineers to engage with the public.

–        The National Co-ordinating Centre has opened a call for public engagement associates to help deliver and support their work. The NCCPE is looking for individuals that can support various areas of their work with a passion for public engagement.

–        Workshop at Cambridge University on Communicating Research which is part of the AHRC Social Media Knowledge Exchange Project.

–        NERC funded? If yes, NERC are offering public engagement training including media training and support on how to design public engagement activities.

Impact updates

–        The ever useful LSE Impact of Social Sciences Blog, is publishing a series of advice notes on how to prepare impact case studies for REF. So far advice notes one and two are proving to be very popular!

–        New report from the National Institute of Health Research: Impact of Patient, Carer and Public Involvement in Cancer Research

–        HEFCE are looking for research users (deadline 5^th December) to be used on the expert panel to assess the impact elements of REF. To help this, a handy guide for research users has been released, which is an excellent introduction to REF including impact elements.