Centre for Public and Policy Engagement

“The purpose of Public Engagement in universities is to ensure research and education leads to improvements in people’s lives. An engaged university plays a direct role in helping to transform social and ecological systems, helps shape societal values on higher education institutions and policies. But this is the thing. Public Engagement is not easy. It means giving up some apparent status and power, often acquired after many years of training and learning knowledge and norms. It means recognising and then abandoning a paradigm that defines expertise in a particular field as inhering in only certain individuals. It means adopting a mode that values the knowledge and understandings of all people in a system. For universities, Public Engagement suggests the need for a new form of civic and public compact. This is how we work, this is how we make things better, this is how we develop and teach students, this is how we will engage with you to make changes you will consider as improvements.”