Learn more about our research
Here you can find out a bit more about how the work we do in the lab reaches the wider community and how you can influence what we do.
Soapbox Science
Caroline Hartley spent an hour on Saturday afternoon (18 June) on a soapbox on Cornmarket Sreet to tell anyone who cared to listen about her research on pain in babies. She had a great crowd and got lots of interesting questions and comments. For more information on Soapbox Science, please visit their website here. You can read a bit more from Caroline here.
Challenging but lots of fun at the same time, Soapbox Science gives you the opportunity to explain your research to a very broad audience (with a new audience every few minutes!).
- Dr Caroline Hartley
Dr Matthew Snape is a guest on Sierra Leone's radio programme Pikin to Pikin Tok.
Dr Matthew Snape discusses the work of the Department's vaccine group on Ebola vaccines on 'Pikin to Pikin Tok' (which means child to child talk in the local language Krio), a radio series launched during the Ebola crisis. You can listen to the programme here.
The UK child rights agency 'Child to Child' and their partner in Sierra Leone, 'the Pikin to Pikin movement' were running a project in the east of Sierra Leone (in the impoverished Kailahun region where the first case of Ebola was reported) since 2011. This project aimed to enhance children's social, literacy, numeracy and life skills, but the Ebola crisis meant that the NGO's work, which required children to come together in groups, had to stop due to the health risk such gatherings would create.
'Child to Child' decided to turn to radio and commissioned radio producer Penny Boreham, who also works for BBC World Service, to produce the programmes about staying healthy during the crisis and its aftermath.
The radio project, which broadcasts Storytime programmes, music programmes and special programmes like this one on the new Ebola vaccines, is funded by Comic Relief and presented by Sierra Leonean storyteller, Usifu Jalloh.
Clinical Trials: A workshop for schools
In 2015, as part of the UK Meningococcal Carriage Study 4, Oxford Vaccine Group offered participating sixth forms the chance to put forward three students for a one-day workshop which took students through the entire process of developing a new vaccine. The short film below shows how the workshop unfolded. We hope to be able to offer similar workshops in the future.
How our research impacts you
The video “From the Minds of Babes" looks at the new frontiers in research on how babies feel pain. It explores how our Paediatrics Pain group is using brain imaging tools to look at responses to pain in new born babies. With their research, the group is aiming to inform the way in which pain is managed in babies in the future.
Work Experience for students
Several of our research groups host work experience student on a regular basis. If you'd like to know what it is like to work in a medical sciences lab, please email us here.
How you can help us
We have worked closely with the on-site charity SSNAP to increase public patient involvement and awareness of our research by creating parent workshops and focus groups.
If you live in the Oxford area and have an interest in vaccine research, you can also be part of a group of members of the public who meet around four times a year to discuss the way clinical trials into new vaccines are run at the Oxford Vaccine Group. We are particularly keen to include parents, since many of our studies involve babies or children. You can email us here for more information or to join the group.
Audio and Video