Open Societal Challenges Programme - Challenge Us

Overview

The Open Societal Challenges Programme at The Open University (OU) is a research initiative that aims to tackle some of the most important challenges of our time through impact-driven research. The Programme's aim is to apply the research excellence of OU academics to some of the most pressing societal challenges facing people across the UK and worldwide to transform lives.

The Programme’s focus on the themes of Tackling Inequalities, Living Well, and Sustainability aligns with their mission to be open to people, places, methods, and ideas.

Challenge Us Competition

They are running a competition open to OU students, UK Charities and Milton Keynes businesses to find the most exciting research ideas tackling real-world problems. Following refers to charity stream only, visit here for further information on the other streams.

Who Can Enter

All UK registered Charities are eligible to enter. Each Charity must nominate a contact person, who must be an employee, trustee or volunteer of the Charity. The nominated contact person must be a resident of the UK, and over 18 years of age. The nominated contact person cannot also enter the competition as a current or recent OU student.

UK Charity entries must be directly related to the work and mission of the Charity.

What are they looking for

They are looking for research ideas that aim to tackle real-world problems.

If you are looking for ideas of challenge-led research, you can peruse the Open Societal Challenges website to see what this can look like.  

While the competition is open to all submissions, the Open Societal Challenges Team is especially keen to receive submissions in the broad thematic areas of

• Tackling inequalities,
• Living Well,
• Sustainability, and
• International Development.

Specifically, the following areas are some where the Open Societal Challenges community holds specific expertise:

• Sustainability and Climate Change
• Disabilities
• Machine learning and AI
• International development
• Justice and democracy
• Health
• Nature
• Transportation
• Relationships and Sex Education

In selecting their winners from their finalists pool, they will be looking for entries where the expertise of OU researchers can make a difference. To learn more about the research expertise at the OU, you can explore the Research at The Open University webpages.

The Winners

Winning Challenges will be assigned to an OU Research Team to take on the research idea and will receive a baseline of £25,000 in research funding as Open Societal Challenges.

• A paid 3-month internship with the Challenge team with the intent to build long-term research capacity within the winning Charity.
• Internships will be available either virtually or in person where possible and will include access to research training and development opportunities.
• Internships must be started within 6 months of winners being announced (further flexibility may be possible on a case-by-case basis)
• Internships will be paid at the current rate for OSC Interns of £15.54 per hour
• Internships will be available both on a full-time or part-time basis
• The internship can be taken up by an employee, volunteer, or trustee of the Charity
• Regardless of whether charity staff are able to undertake the research internship, a commitment from the OU research team to co-design and co-deliver the proposed research programme, thus building research capacity within the winning charity.
• A commitment from the Open Societal Challenges Programme that the Challenge will receive a baseline of £25,000 in pump-prime funding following the OSC processes and procedures.

Winning Charities will be invited to co-design the specifics of the research project with the research team, and to contribute their perspective, knowledge, and experiences to the project. The winning Charity will also receive an optional paid internship for one of its employees, trustees, or volunteers with the research team to help build research capacity (hybrid or inperson). For more details, please consult their Competition Rules.

They will announce their finalists in June 2024. Finalists will have a chance to have their entry published on the Open Societal Challenges Online Platform and may be invited to pitch their idea at a research event in the Summer.

They will select at least one winner per stream, and they will announce the winners by October
2024.