Professors Sieber, Marzano, and Barling at the Hendon campus
Putting knowledge into action to improve healthcare and reduce inequalities accessing it.
We foster skills for economic participation and success through Entrepeneurship, Culture, and Creativity
More on Culture and Enterprise
Making communities more sustainable and fairer to protect the environment and drive positive change.
With a belief that entrepreneurship can be key for a fair and inclusive future, we foster skills for economic participation and success to build a more equal, caring and prosperous society. We use culture and creativity to enrich the lives of individuals and communities and we contribute to organisations of all types through impactful research and knowledge exchange.
Locally, nationally, and around the world, we support people to make their communities more sustainable and fairer and to protect the environment. Globally, our expertise influences economic, social and environmental policy and practice, enabling us to create change within communities.
Taking action to make healthcare better for those who need it, we aim to reduce inequalities in people’s care. Beyond healthcare, we are improving physical, mental and social health and wellbeing in all parts of society.
Barnet and Middlesex curated the 2024 events festival to support Barnet Climate Month. Middlesex colleagues, led by associate professor Steffi Sachsenmaier, have several events in the schedule. All details of when and where on campus can be found by following this link to the main schedule.
May 15-16, 2024, Knowledge into Action Lab
KiA lab returned after its successful launch in summer 2023.
The two-day programme featured provocation briefs from Age UK Barnet and Clean Air Barnet, and Humanities across Borders, offering the chance to work on real-world issues with colleagues from across the university.
We heard from Professors Osgood and De Rijke on the ongoing Minibeasts of Barnet project and the academic papers, picturebook and launch event planned on the back of it.
Another KiA-inspired project led by Clare O'Donoghue, the Ante-natal English for Ethnic Minority Women in the London borough of Haringey is also well under way, and the team from Citizens UK reported on their campaigning work on behalf of refugees and asylum seekers.
Carys Thomas from the Park Theatre spoke about their Reminiscence Project – working with older demetia sufferers and their carers. The potential to scale such a programme provoked much interest and discussion as to whether this could be an activity translatable to meet wider needs.
Helen Bendon invited us to attend the Hear my voice launch in the faculty of Arts and Creative Industries where many Lab attendees repaired to at the end of the day.
'Scammers: The Musical' emerged as a response to the provocation from Age UK Barnet . How can Middlesex deploy our world-class performing arts talent and facilities to combat the malignant crime of Scamming? Playing on trust and a perception of technical naivety, Scamming is a multimillion-pound criminal practice that disproportionally targets the elderly.
The provocation from Clean Air Barnet focused on the lack of reliable and meaningful data on indoor air quality. This hampers air quality advocates from effectively influencing building regulations, public and private health policy, and other areas that impact on people's health and the environment they inhabit. Our proposal is to design and run a systematic survey in a range of locations across Barnet, in order to formulate further proposals to address the issue.
May 2, 2024, T3 Dialogue
The second in the T3 Dialogue series explored what we mean by Knowledge Exchange and how we can best harness MDX talents to this endeavour.
How we can translate that into more effective impact?
Should this lead to more focused research or is it a sufficient activity on its own?
If exchange is to be meaningful does it require a change of engagement practice by Universities?
Where does the expertise reside?
The Panel:
Prof. Carmel Clancy, Dean Health, Social Care and Education
Prof. Loraine Leeson, Professor of Art & Social Practice
Prof. Andy Bardill, Professor of Product Design & Engineering
Dr. Jenni Ward, Associate Professor in Criminology
Chair: Prof. Kurt Barling, Professor of Journalism & University Theme Director, Culture & Enterprise
April 25, 2024, Early-Career Researcher's Forum
An afternoon of thoughtful stimulation and practical advice. We heard from new and experienced researchers, with presentations addressing issues from across the globe: from the hyper-local challenges of suicide prevention in Ghana, to the details of Shakespeare's morning commute. From the epi-semiotics of food confusion, Afghan enterprise, and top tips on the best citation software to use.
A big thanks to everyone who joined us, and a huge one to MDX support staff for making the day such a success!
Emanuela Bove “An alternative perspective on food identification”
Neelam Raina "Demystifying Impact "
April 16, 2024, Transdisciplinary Practice in Action
Transdisciplinarity sounds like a lot of things and not anything at all. It can be a confusing term but it is an idea, a concept, that makes complete sense to those who are working in professional environments.
We spent an engaging and illuminating afternoon exploring these ideas – with the help of leading exponents from academia and industry.
March 18, 2024, Student Showcase
Celebrating our students’ and colleagues’ fantastic work: sparking interest, discussion and connection around the very notion of Knowledge in Action and the many forms it may take.
Counter don’t Cancel: Anti-misogyny work in schools: H.bendon@mdx.ac.uk
Mdx Works: Employability and placements: http://mdxworks.com/
Citizens UK: Supporting asylum seekers: https://www.citizensuk.org
MDX Marketing: Free bus travel for asylum seekers: Campaign story
Video and Creative Methods Research Group: Research Group
MDX Iranian Society: Vida Baradarannia: VB456@live.mdx.ac.uk
MDX Enactus: Social & environmental change through entrepreneurial action: C.Moon@mdx.ac.uk
Kilburn Lab: Unearthing the peoples’ history of Kilburn: Dr Francesca Murialdo
SMASHfest: Our VR game, based on the live immersive show – ‘Space Plague’: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmLBCu6H
Fresh Air Campus: Air quality action in Barnet: C.Viavattene@mdx.ac.uk
Citizens Assembly: Citizens selected at random to make recommendations on issues: https://citizensassembly.co.uk/
Posters in Parliament: Taking MDX innovation to Government: H.Shayesteh@mdx.ac.uk
Women in Stem: Computing group for female students and staff at Middlesex: K.Androutsopoulos@mdx.ac.uk
Women’s Engineering Society: Encouraging more women to pursue a STEM education: M.Karamanoglu@mdx.ac.uk
Library Special Collections: The MDX collections of art and design: https://libguides.mdx.ac.uk/specialcolls
Learning from Labour: Society for Research into Higher Education: MDX Research Highlights
The project will comprise a series of research and activities with reception class children, including nature trails, arts-based making activities, discussion groups, and performances with an inter-generational focus. This cohort of children will be 21 in 2040, when Barnet aims to become a fully net-zero borough.
The focus of the activities with children will be on 'minibeasts’: microbial and insect life found in a variety of habitats, including the many green spaces in the borough. The project will emphasise how 'small things can make a big difference’, encouraging children, with their families and carers, to take personal responsibility for the environment that they share with even the smallest of creatures. And to contemplate how small lifestyle and behavioural changes can have profound implications for addressing climate issues locally.
An innovative project that leverages the expertise of Middlesex University in Midwifery, Applied Linguistics and Education. The primary objective is to develop an EAL syllabus tailored to empower ethnic minority women’s participation in ante-natal classes, thereby improving their understanding of crucial medical information.
The initial phase of the project involves creating a corpus of spoken and written English commonly used in ante-natal contexts between healthcare professionals and patients. Employing corpus linguistics analysis, we aim to identify prevalent language patterns used in discussing maternal health and pregnancy, thereby informing the design of the EAL syllabus.
Subsequent steps include the design, piloting and refinement of teaching materials based on the syllabus, ensuring their effectiveness and practicality. These materials will be used by midwifery students on community placements.
London Climate Action week is harnessing the power of London for global climate action. LCAW is the annual event bringing together world-leading climate professionals and communities across London and beyond to find practical solutions to climate change.
Founded in 2019, LCAW is the largest independent climate change event in Europe. LCAW is helping to shape our future into one that is net-zero, equitable and resilient. Rooted in our diverse, international city, LCAW uses its global perspective to spark climate action around the world. Come join us this year in harnessing the power of London for global climate action!
