Doctoral researchers from the School of Psychology recently ran a public engagement event at the New Library in Birmingham city centre. This was organised as part of the ESRC festival of Social Sciences and involved a day of posters and interactive activities with members of the public in order to present and discuss research that is taking place at the University.
They also held a lunchtime talk session where four postgraduate researchers spoke, each giving an overview of their research topic and how it impacts upon society. Jason Thomas started off with a talk on his research into using social norms to help people make healthier choices when selecting food to eat. Sophie Milward then spoke about children’s development of key cognitive abilities such as controlling impulses, taking other people’s perspectives and working as a team. Carmel Bennett focused on the way parental feeding practices can influence dietary intake, food choices and weight in infants and older children. Kari Davies rounded off with a discussion of whether offenders' crimes can be linked to them through their crime scene behaviour.
The activities, posters and talks were very well received and the researchers had a chance to chat to a lot of people about their research and relate it to current topics people had heard about in the media.
