Horizons Institute

The Horizons Institute provides a shared platform for tackling global challenges. These challenges are too complex to address in a single academic discipline or sector.

To have the biggest impact on the most pressing global issues we need collaboration, bringing together diverse skills, ideas and perspectives.

Our supportive environment creates opportunities to develop new collaborations that inspire bold ideas and approaches. We help academics enhance their interdisciplinary skills, build their careers and elevate interdisciplinary research – at Leeds and around the world.

We connect interdisciplinary research with communities, NGOs and charities, local authorities, policymakers, businesses and the public, developing research together to create a positive impact. 

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

Learn more about our ambitions and measures of success, and read our Inclusion Strategy to find out more about the values that drive our work.

Collaborate

Get involved

If you are a University of Leeds colleague, 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

Timely collaboration opens the door to global health partnership

Helping University of Leeds researchers work in partnership with the World Health Organisation to create better global preparedness in health.
Physical activity research finds strength in numbers

The InterActive research network promotes interdisciplinary collaboration across the University of Leeds for those working on movement and physical activity.
Improving health information for families through African collaboration

A new collaborative project with researchers from Africa and the University of Leeds explores ways to improve how health information is communicated to families.
Helping to deliver a cultural showcase

LEEDS 2023 will host a major cultural programme that promises to be a spectacular celebration of a vibrant city region. Find out how Horizons is helping them embed principles of co-creation.
Leeds research network to tackle major global health threat

Antimicrobial resistance is one of the top ten global health threats facing humanity. AMR@Leeds aims to address this pressing issue through an interdisciplinary approach to research.
Looking beyond medicine – a new network for mental health research

The Leeds Interdisciplinary Mental Health Research Network (LIMHRN) launched in January 2022 to bring together different disciplinary perspectives on mental health.