Horizons Institute

The Horizons Institute provides a shared platform for tackling global challenges by connecting interdisciplinary research with communities, non-government agencies (NGOs) and charities, local authorities, policymakers, businesses and the public.

To have the biggest impact on the most pressing global issues, we need collaboration. The challenges we face are too complex to address in a single academic discipline or sector. We need to bring together diverse different skills, ideas and perspectives.

Our supportive environment creates opportunities to develop new collaborations that inspire bold ideas and approaches.

We help academics at any stage in their career to enhance their interdisciplinary skills, build their careers and elevate interdisciplinary research at Leeds and around the world.

We aim to connect with communities, NGOs and charities, local authorities, policymakers, businesses and the public, to explore their particular challenges and develop research with a positive impact together.

Our aim is to get researchers from all walks of life talking to each other, and to people with real-world challenges. It is about a two-way flow of ideas and co-designing solutions.

Stuart Taberner, Director of the Horizons Institute

Collaborate

Get involved

If you are a community, NGO, charity, local authority, policymaker, business or member of the public, find out how we can work together.
Our people

Meet the driving forces of the Horizons Institute community; researchers dedicated to tackling global challenges collaboratively beyond disciplinary boundaries.

Case studies

Creative collaboration between science and art inspires new approaches

Pairing artists with researchers at the University’s Bragg Centre for Materials Research is helping develop materials of the future and sparking new ideas.
Sparking novel projects to help improve lives through better design

Connections made through the University’s Crucible programme have led Dr Lisa-Dionne Morris to new projects as varied as watering can design and virus detection.