Queen Mary is the sector leader in public engagement, and we are committed to engaging and collaborating with communities in East London and across the globe through our research, teaching and other core business.
The excellence of public engagement at Queen Mary was recognised by the award of the Platinum Engage Watermark for Public Engagement by the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement in 2021, the first award made at this level.
Queen Mary’s Civic University Agreement (CUA), launched in 2022, formalises our commitment to maximising our place-based impact in East London.
To get involved or find out more, you can contact the Centre for Public Engagement.
Held annually, the Festival of Communities showcases some of Queen Mary’s leading research and each year attracts thousands of people from different East End communities. It celebrates everything that makes Tower Hamlets a fantastic place to live and work through games, sports, crafts, and other family friendly activities and events.
Street art, murals and graffiti can be seen all over urban areas in Nepal. Queen Mary researcher Charlotta Salmi has considered how activists and agencies in Nepal use these media to raise awareness of gender-based violence (GBV) in the country.
Working with several partners and research collaborators both in Nepal and around the world, Dr Salmi set out to examine how effective existing street art is as a medium, how it represents GBV, and how audiences respond to it.
Medical students at Queen Mary launched a public health campaign to educate teenagers on the neurological risks of using nitrous oxide.
N2O: Know the Risks was launched after Alastair Noyce, Professor in Neurology and Neuroepidemiology at Queen Mary’s Wolfson Institute of Population Health and Consultant Neurologist at Barts NHS Trust, had seen a steep rise in spinal injuries among young people due to use of the drug.
The campaign educates teenagers through interactive sessions, social media and developing further research into the drug.
Launching a nitrous oxide public health campaign
Centre of the Cell is the first science education centre in the world to be located within working biomedical research laboratories. It has engaged with more than 230,000 visitors since 2009 including, in 2021-22, through 406 curriculum-linked science shows and workshops for more than 13,000 young people.
New investment will allow for a refurbishment which will see the installation of state-of-the-art computer and film technology and a refresh of activities and film to reflect the latest in biomedical research at Queen Mary.
This will ensure that Centre of the Cell continues to inspire young people in East London and beyond.
Local engagement through Centre of the Cell’s STEMPod
The Turtle Project is a citizen science project created by Queen Mary's Eizaguirre Lab in collaboration with conservation NGOs from every island of the Cabo Verde archipelago, University of Cabo Verde and National Institute of the Sea.
Involving local university students, communities and authorities, the project develops conservation strategies to improve the state of the sea turtle population. Since 2008, information from more than 5,000 loggerhead turtles is available in a database for other research and conservation groups.
Turtle conservation