To celebrate UCL's bicentennial they're asking you to think about comparing the world of work of 200 years ago, with what you think it might look like 200 years in the future.
UCL200 Past and Future of Work Competition
Team up to take part in a research project competition – with opportunities to interview employers, win a cash prize, and form part of UCL200 Bicentennial legacy materials!
Students are invited to form their own teams of 3-5 members, to propose – and potentially carry out – a project looking at the past and future of work. Project teams can be from any year group and degree background, and we strongly encourage interdisciplinary. UCL Careers want to see how different academic perspectives might approach this question – and what the integrated result might look like!
If you wish to take part independently without a team, you may still apply, but it's recommend to connect with others to benefit from each other’s knowledge and skills. If you’d like to work as a team but aren’t able to find one yourself, you’ll have an opportunity to indicate on your application form that you would be interested in being matched up to students with similar approaches. Depending on numbers and similarities of projects, UCL Careers will attempt to join students up into teams where possible.
Stage 1: Application
Assemble your team, or apply solo, and submit a proposal to UCL Careers about what you’d like to find out, how you would go about doing it, and what your outputs might look like.
If you need (or would benefit from) funding to carry out your idea, for example to rent a piece of equipment, or towards travel to carry out in-person interviews , please include an estimate of costings as part of your application.
Apply via online form. Please only submit one application per team, and there's a place to state in the application who the other team members are.
You might like to think about the questions below to inspire you, but don’t feel limited to these - they're just some ideas to help you get going:
- What was UCL teaching in 1826? What kind of roles would UCL graduates have gone on to? What was the relationship between UCL’s teaching, graduate career paths, and the broader state of the world e.g. politics, knowledge, scientific advancement, etc in 1826?
- What expectations or ideas of the future did people hold in 1826?
- How would our current Grand Challenges have been viewed in 1826, and how might they be view in 2226? What might this mean for the labour market and workplace?
- What kind of ideas about the future did people have in 1826 regarding education, global labour markets, skills shortages and damages, and global mobility? How are these things conceptualised now? How might they be in the future?
- UCL is London’s global university. How might all of the above questions be considered through a London-specific lens vs a global one?
We’ll be looking for a proposal that applies creativity and original thinking with a realistic, pragmatic approach.
Stage 2: The Projects
The top teams from Stage 1 will be invited to carry out their project, meet with employers, and present their final outputs to a panel of judges in March 2026.
To help you in your thinking about the future of work, the Careers team will organise a meeting in January to connect you to a group of industry contacts, who will share their sector’s perspectives on the world of work in the future. You’ll have a chance to ask them questions, and learn more about the horizon-scanning in their workplaces. This will be a semi-structured session to enable you to spend time with each employer and discuss ideas together – you’ll be encouraged to bring some thoughtful questions to get the most of out it. This session will provide useful information for your project, but also develop your networking, research, and communication skills.
You’ll then have until the final event in March (date tbc) to finalise your project before presenting it to a panel of judges. You’ll have a presentation slot of about 20 minutes in which to present your findings to the judges.
The exact format of your output is up to you! It could be a presentation, a video, a design for a product or service that you imagine being relevant for 2226 – as long as you can present it within your slot time. There should be some visual element of your presentation. The competition organisers will be in touch with you closer to the date to confirm your format and any associated A/V requirements.
If you have any questions, please contact Weronika and Aleks at [email protected] and [email protected].
Apply for the competition here. Deadline to apply is Sunday 30 November, 12am