Doing something different with your dissertation
At the heart of the Community Research Initiative (or CRIS for short!) is the opportunity to carry out a collaborative dissertation project.
We help you to partner with a voluntary and community sector organisation to solve real world problems and create a positive social impact with your master's research. There’s two ways to engage:
Think of the Noticeboard ideas as seeds for collaboration which you can rework with a community partner so that it works for both of you.
We will continue to add to the Noticeboard, with new projects populating until the end of February 2025.
You'll need to speak to our team before submitting an expression of interest.
If you have an idea or organisation you’re passionate about, we'll connect you for a knowledge exchange. You might instantly click with an organisation or chat to a few potential partners: it's about finding the right fit.
You’ll need to speak to our team before submitting a brokering request. We are now accepting brokering requests.
What's our programme all about?
- Our core values
The Community Research Initiative has three core values:
There are valid perspectives and ways of knowing besides academic knowledge
The highest quality knowledge and information is multi-perspective
New knowledge should lead to positive social change
- How we put values into action
Following from our values, we strive to:
Emphasise power sharing and knowledge democracy: we are not ‘academic saviours’ of our lesser local communities and citizens. We acknowledge gaps in our own knowledge and seek to find out more from experts within the community and voluntary sector
Act as a bridge: a bridge into the university of grounded, experiential, lived experience from citizens and citizen groups while at the same time, a bridge out of the university of academic perspectives and skills
Promote the creation of useful and useable products from student research: we challenge our students to always ask ‘why?’. Why does the work that they are doing matter? We not only give our students space to work out the answers to this question, but we help them equip each other to work with their partners to answer these questions together
Why collaborate?
We know that your master's year is busy, and working collaboratively can sometimes be a challenge. But it's also incredibly rewarding! Here's a few reasons why we think CRIS is an excellent way to enhance your time at UCL:
- Tackle real world problems and contribute to causes you care about
- Do research that creates with useful and usable outputs
- Grow your skills in collaborative research and cross sector working
- Join a community of students doing research for social good
- Build connections with voluntary sector leaders and community engagers
- Get an extra layer of support through our 1-to-1 support and mentoring
Most importantly, we want to remind you that you CAN DO IT! You are a researcher, (yes YOU, reading this) and have skills and insights which are valuable to third sector organisations. We're here to support and help you reflect every step of the way!
When does it happen?
We know it feels early to be talking about dissertations, but working in a collaborative way takes time! We want to give you the space to do some exciting brainstorming about partnership working before you have to submit your dissertation proposal. Check out our timeline below to get a better idea of what your year could look like.
From dissertation to Community Product:
However you connect with your partner organisation, the end result is the same. After submitting in September, you'll be supported to create a Community Product. This is where you reformat your research findings in an accessible form to share with your partner and/or action your findings. The format of this is entirely up to you and your partner, but we have plenty of examples to give you inspiration and guide you to a suitable output.