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.

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

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.
Keyhole device to reach more countries

A technology designed to support keyhole surgery in remote health clinics in India could be extended to other countries, thanks to funding from the Horizons Institute Crucible programme.
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.