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Linking Leeds with DfT

The Linking Leeds with Department for Transport (DfT) lunchtime webinars aim to help build a richer connection between the academic and policy worlds by inviting Social Scientists from Leeds and members of the government department to engage in dialogue around key research questions of mutual interest. These events are also open to other sectors so help to generate multi-stakeholder dialogue around shared societal challenges relating to transport.

These bi-monthly webinars are an hour long and usually take place over a Wednesday afternoon, 1-2pm. The usual format is around 20 minutes academic speaker and 20-30mins Q&A however we are flexible on the format and open to any suggestions for a different way of doing things. We very much welcome panel events from multiple speakers so please do get in touch if you have an idea for a talk of that nature.

Our first mini-series of events centred around questions relating to the societal and economic impact of COVID-19 on transport in its broadest sense, with an academic presentation to unpack the issue further followed by an interactive Q&A session allowing audience members from across academia, policy worlds and more to find out more and engage in a wider discussion.  The events were recorded, and you can watch them below.

This next series of events will focus on the following DfT’s priority areas of:

  • Decarbonisation
  • Levelling up
  • Improving transport for the user

Here is the Department for Transport’s latest areas of research interest document which sets out the areas of research the department is interested in hearing about in more detail. 

If you are interested in participating as a speaker please send an abstract of no more than 250 words to LSSI on lssi@leeds.ac.uk for further consideration. Please include in your abstract an outline of the research you wish to discuss and how this research relates to these DfT priority areas aforementioned, for further consideration.  Please also contact LSSI if you have any questions as you are preparing these abstracts or thinking more broadly about policy engagement.