University of Dundee, Faculty of Life Sciences, Annual Report 2025: Public Engagement

2025 was a challenging year for the University. Financial restrictions and staff departures meant fewer resources for our public engagement work, and the uncertainty around the University’s future was difficult to face. However, throughout all of this, our staff and students continued to look forward and outwards, sharing their time and enthusiasm with many different audiences across Dundee and beyond – a key effort towards (re-)building University’s reputation. The public engagement team enhanced the training offered around science communication and outreach, and led a very successful programme of training and practice for the UKRI-flagship BARIToNE Collaborative Training Partnership (CTP) at the James Hutton Institute. This culminated in a fun and successful outing at the University’s annual Plant Power day at the Botanic Gardens. We continued engaging with schools and our creative partners, and shared our expertise with other practitioners across the UK. Highlights included: → Over 2000 people engaged with including pupils from 14 local secondary schools and further education colleges, local community groups and people with lived experience of diseases that our scientists study → Over 180 staff and students participated in almost 40 public engagement activities with over a third undertaking more than one event. Participants ranged from undergraduates to Principal Investigators → Over 230 staff and students undertook training from the PE Team including a dedicated programme for BARIToNE PhD students → Over 20 applicants provided with PE Team support for funding with over £40k awarded in 2025 for public engagement related activities from four successful applications → Over 10 documents added to the University of Dundee Research Repository, Discovery in line with our open access approach. Collectively, these documents, which includes how to guides for various activities, reports and resources, were downloaded over 800 times. Looking ahead, we will continue to seek out opportunities to support our engagement work, and maintain the partnerships and projects that we have built. We anticipate the Faculty of Life Sciences will be equally as engaged and inspiring as the School has been and look forward to what is on the horizon. The Life Sciences Public Engagement team