Roberta Bellini
I joined the Dŵr Uisce team in my role as Research Fellow at Trinity Business School in November 2020. My work and research have concerned the project area of Dissemination and Communication and it required a lot of interactions and collaboration with the other team members as well as with external stakeholders.
Having stepped back into academia after 13 years of working in a water management consultancy in the UK, and in formal and non-formal education settings in Ireland, I brought to the Dŵr Uisce team my practice-based experience in water-energy nexus science communication, outreach and industry engagement. This experience has helped me to contribute to designing, planning and delivering a number of events, from sustainability webinars to school workshops, lab visits and community events.
From the beginning I felt very welcome, everyone was available to meet me (online initially due to geographical distance and COVID restrictions) to explain their research topics and to explore ways we could work together. And this openness continued throughout my time on the project: so many ideas were born during online meetings! In particular, this happened frequently with Dr Aisha Bello-Dambatta in the Bangor team, when some ideas were taken from ideation stage to prototyping, to final product. An example is how we developed the Dŵr Uisce Climate Action Hackathon programme for secondary schools, of which we both are very proud! Another highlight has been my work with Dr Murali in developing four 3-D virtual tours of our demo sites. Take a tour at the bottom of the page here. Throughout, I have enjoyed working with my fellow team members to share our research output and water-energy efficiency solutions with the academic and non-academic communities.
Figure 1: participants to our youth and citizen engagement events
Overall, the programme of Dŵr Uisce events has reached out to over 1000 people between September 2016 and the end of the project. What is interesting to note is that 622 of them are youth and citizens (Figure 1). The remaining participants are from one of the 250 organisations in our Water-Energy Network working in a broad range of sectors, including local authorities, hospitality, food and drink industries, utility, energy and engineering consultancies.
I have managed our website and social media channels, and edited our Newsletter, all of which have amplified our impact through sharing knowledge and solutions. A summary of the overall Dŵr Uisce dissemination efforts, including peer-reviewed publication, newspaper and online media coverage, is illustrated in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Dwr Uisce overall media presence
The data demonstrate a keen interest in hearing about what research-based solutions can deliver when applied in real-life situations. Hopefully, businesses and organisations will replicate these energy- saving solutions which we have demonstrated in four different locations.
From a research perspective, I have been positively challenged to explore topics completely new to me like action learning, network action learning and research management. I have contributed to two journal articles and presented my work with schools at two international conferences in 2022. One of the highlights in my involvement in the research part of my work, is definitely the collaboration with the colleagues from Computer Science in Bangor University to develop a project metadata visualisation tool. Interested to know more? Join our webinar on February 15, 2023 at 1pm.
None of this could have happened without the interest and participation of non-academic partners, without the collaboration with other team members, without the support and encouragement of Professors Paul Coughlan and Aonghus McNabola, and last but not least, the funding from the Ireland-Wales programme. So, in summary, below is my experience on the Dŵr Uisce project!
In summary….