Universities as Social and Cultural Infrastructure: Partnerships, Incentives and Funding

This will be an online event via Zoom.

The British Academy has instituted a new series of roundtables on universities as social and cultural infrastructure. This series expands on an initial roundtable looking at this theme that was held in October 2023. A summary note of this event, which provides an indication of the rationale and thinking behind the expanded series, is available here. The roundtable series forms part of the Academy's broader Public Policy work theme focused on social and cultural infrastructure. The roundtables are being held in conjunction with the National Civic Impact Accelerator based at Sheffield Hallam University.

The principal question the series aims to explore is: 

• How can universities as institutions, both individually and collectively, create, support and enhance social and cultural infrastructure to improve and sustain their local communities and places?  

This online roundtable, the the third and final roundtable in the series, will explore this question in relation to the topic of partnerships, incentives and funding. It will consider how universities can develop effective, long-term relationships with local partners, including local authorities, for the purposes of civic engagement. It will also consider how the internal structures of universities relate to social and cultural infrastructure, and how funding and other incentives and drivers in the Higher Education system relate to social and cultural infrastructure. 

The roundtable will bring together a wide range of participants, from academia, higher education administration, and policymaking. A Zoom link, and a full agenda, will be sent to signed-up attendees around one week before the roundtable.

Please note that signing up for this roundtable does not automatically mean you have signed-up for the other roundtables in the series, on  linking social and cultural infrastructure with R+D and innovation and connecting different university constituencies and respectively. Please see the relevant TicketTailor pages here and here to sign-up for those roundtables.