OSC wave two funding winners announced

The second wave of funded ‘Challenge Us!’ challenges has recently been announced with charities and businesses partnering with The Open University (OU) to tackle some of society's most critical challenges.

In 2023, the OU launched the Open Societal Challenges (OSC) concept, with the goal of using world-leading research to work with external partners across the themes of Tackling Inequality, Living Well and Sustainability.

After receiving over 200 potential challenges from internal academics, the University launched the ‘Challenge Us!’ competition for recent graduates, UK charities and Milton Keynes businesses to find the most exciting research ideas for tackling real-world problems. In September 2024, the first wave of funding winners was announced at the OU Research event ‘Together, we shape what happens next’ and now the second wave of funded winners has been decided.

The wave two funded winners and challenges are:

• The Verbal Arts Centre (Northern Ireland) - Beyond ‘Liking’ or ‘Not Liking’: Co-Created Stories for Social Media Resilience.
• The Ruth Strauss Foundation - Investigating the wellbeing and support needs of those affected by non-smoking related lung cancer.
• CHIVA Africa - Enhancing ART Adherence in Vulnerable Children in KwaZulu-Natal: Understanding factors affecting caregiver support.
• Suffolk Mind - Addressing low response rates and under-representation of mental health service-users and those with poor mental health within mental health research and evaluation.
• The Crichton Trust - Developing a framework for a tool to measure progress towards Regenerative Heritage Greenspace.
• Youth Support Services (YSS) - An investigation into the impact of online-media exposure of familial crimes on children.
• Transforming Autism - The effectiveness of strengths-based early intervention with young autistic children and their families.
• Bloody Good Period - Free to Bleed: Data-Driven Advocacy and Art for Menstrual Justice.

These challenges will see OU academics and researchers work collaboratively with experts from the charitable sector to address critical societal issues through impactful research. The University will be sharing more information about each of these challenges on the OU Research website in early 2025.