Introduction
There are gaps in our understanding of health inequalities relating to minority or marginalised groups. Despite calls from high profile journals (Kmietowicz et al, 2019), adequate research has failed to materialise in this area (Salway et al, 2020).
Through the decolonisation process, lecturers are asked to analyse their curriculum for issues relating to such biases, and instances are likely to exist where there are simply gaps in the academic literature relating to their subject matter. This creates an opportunity to capture, record and advertise novel research questions that relate to racial health inequalities. Lecturers could drive the proposed research or foster collaborations with others. This process could have a number of positive impacts:
- Creates a transparent assessment of the state of research gaps and biases
- Creates direct and reciprocating links between teaching and research creating a virtuous circle of sorts and reinforces Bristol’s long-held traditions on research led teaching.
- Feeds into grant activity, research projects, PhD proposals and mini-projects
- Provides a means for pathway 1 and 3 staff to generate novel research questions and research outputs
- Improve image and reputation of the medical school and the University more broadly
More broadly, a healthy ‘teaching-research-nexus’ is an important element of a University’s role.
How to develop a research proposal
- Lecturer Identifies the Research question, writes brief synopsis and submits form. This will be made public unless specified otherwise
- The Research question is developed into a Research project (see options below) with Lecturer being lead or collaborator, according to their desired level of involvement
- The Directory of Research projects is disseminated to students via different courses and channels across the medical school
We would like you to use this directory to track the lifecycle of projects from initialisation to potential papers and feeding back into the educational materials.
Research project dissemination
Across the school, courses and PhD programmes each tend to have their own methods for recording and advertising research projects. The Directory of project proposals will be circulated to programme directors for courses and PhD programmes across the medical school, with the intention that they in turn will alert their students to the list. You may however wish to also target specific courses or programmes directly through their own proposal systems.
List of research outlets
A number of options exist internally in the University to advertise Research questions to staff and students, and Research projects to students, or for larger initiatives might be explored to tackle in conjunction with University or Specialist Research Institutes.
Undergraduate courses
- Medical school undergraduates – Second and third year Student Choice Projects. Note that in the third year students can develop their own projects and should be signposted to the cache of Research Questions
- Intercalating BSc undergraduates – many of these programmes have summer research projects, and Research Projects can be advertised to relevant courses
Postgraduate courses
Many of these taught MSc programmes have summer research projects, and the proposed Research Projects can be advertised to students on relevant courses.
PhD programmes
- PhD mini projects or full projects on the following programmes
Proposals
To register a decolonisation knowledge gap we ask that researchers complete the following form
A directory of existing research proposals can be found here: