Celebrating this year's FASS Festival of Research

Over 240 guests and internal delegates participated in this year's FASS Festival of Research at the University, celebrating collaboration across our Schools and Departments and showcasing the impressive and diverse range of research taking place at Surrey.

Themes included:

• ‘Engaging with Digital Realities’ which focused on the challenges of smart technologies and how perception-based immersive sound can fool the ear
• ‘Risk, Data, Policy and Wellbeing’ which looked at how microdata can estimate the cost of crime and how neuroprediction studies are linking brain abnormalities with an increased risk of violent offending
• ‘The Politics of Data’ which explored how international politics is impacted by technological change and the importance of data in economic policymaking.

In addition, a FASS research centre exhibition and our annual postgraduate research poster competition allowed staff and students to showcase their research, and Professor Sabine Braun, the Faculty’s Associate Dean for Research and Innovation, presented both this year’s winner, Christy Hehir (SHTM), and runner up Marta Alvaro-Taus (Economics), with their prizes.

In the afternoon, we were delighted to welcome Paul Manners, Director of NCCPE (National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement) along with Ross Kelway from the University’s Public Engagement team; and Professor Simon Usherwood from the Department of Politics, to discuss public engagement. This session marked another new element to the Festival and received a fantastic response.

Professor Sabine Braun, Associate Dean for Research and Innovation said:

"This year’s Festival has brought together academics in FASS and beyond to discuss the realities of the ongoing digital transformation of our society, the benefits, uses and risks of big data and other important societal issues from different disciplinary perspectives. It has thus highlighted the enormous potential in FASS for developing collaborative research that addresses these issues and makes an important contribution to society.”

If you have any feedback or would like to get involved with next year's event, please contact fassresearch@surrey.ac.uk