Our Work

Brexit Report and Observatory

One year on from the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the EU, the Young Academy of Scotland released a report giving an overview of how ‘Brexit’ will affect many aspects of Scottish society.  This report may be found here. https://www.youngacademyofscotland.org.uk/images/downloads/publications/BREXIT_the_impact_on_scotland.pdf  

YAS is also currently collecting case studies on the impact of Brexit on research, innovation, and higher education.  We released a preliminary report of our findings here, but continue to welcome submissions. https://www.youngacademyofscotland.org.uk/images/downloads/publications/BREXIT_observatory_Oct_2017.pdf  

University-Prison Partnerships in International Perspective

This workshop explored how universities across the globe are engaging those in prison and criminal justice settings. With participants from over ten Universities, the workshop offered a forum to learn about innovative practices and to share ideas about developing these and maximising impact. It featured keynote presentations by Professor Lori Pompa (Temple University, USA), who founded the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Programme, a programme in which university courses are taught in prisons and attended both by (outside) university students and (inside) prisoner students; and Professor Fiona Measham (Durham University) who has overseen the very first application of this initiative in the UK. 

For more information about this YAS event, please see this article. https://www.youngacademyofscotland.org.uk/news/university-prison-partnerships-in-international-perspective-event-20-march-2015.html  

A Question for Europe

A joint project between YAS and six other European young academies, A Question for Europe was a competition which asked participants to submit creative answers to the question “who gets carried away by Europe.”  Winning entries included a short story about refugees in the Mediterranean, an academic report, and a photo journal.  To read more about this competition visit this article. 

https://www.youngacademyofscotland.org.uk/news/european-young-academies-award-prizes-for-answers-to-the-question-who-gets-carried-away-by-europe.html  

Life Science Event with StartEDIN

In early 2017, YAS helped to organise an event at the Edinburgh City Chambers about tech and lifesciences enterprises with StartEDIN. Over 60 people attended the event, which included interactive sessions and discussions as well as speakers from IOMet Pharma and IpOncology. You can see a full blog post about the event and photos at the StartEDIN website here.

Connecting Scotland's Entrepreneurial Network

In partnership with the RSE Enterprise Fellowship programme, YAS has twice held “Connecting Scotland’s Entrepreneurial Network.” This evening event allows innovators from across Scotland to network and showcase their business propositions.

The focus of the evening is linking talent across the organizations, providing an opportunity for budding entrepreneurs to practice their business pitches, and stimulating discussion around issues faced by start-up and spin-out companies. Entrepreneurs benefited from the diversity of other participants with backgrounds across technology, life sciences, business, finance, retail and food and drink.

Learn more about the 2015 event here.  Learn more about the 2014 event here.

Silent Histories

YAS produced a short video exploring the silent history of refugees in Scotland with an accompanying pack of school resources aimed at the 8-11 year old audience.  Entitled ‘Silent Histories’ the project helped Scottish children develop a knowledge and understanding of the experience that past and present refugees have in Scotland. The video featured Scottish refugee and mental health campaigner, Amal Azzudin.  To learn more about this project and to watch the video, visit this article in the YAS news section.

Academic Women Now

Published by YAS in 2016, this booklet highlights the varied routes to success taken by our female academicians.  Each page gives an overview of one woman’s academic career, considering their personal circumstances as well as their professional achievements.

The booklet aims to facilitate and inspire further discussion and study about the career progression of women in different disciplines across the entire range of academic disciplines. By focusing on the mid-career stage, it offers a set of role models for early career researchers, many of whom still harbour doubts about whether academia is a good career for women. 

To learn more about this project and to download the booklet, visit this article in the YAS news section.

Building Meaningful Links with Communities

Held at the University of Dundee, YAS organised this workshop on developing long-term relationships and collaborations between researchers and practitioners, on the one hand, and communities, third sector and public sector organisations, on the other. One of the outcomes of this event was a one page guide to creating effective links with local communities, entitled ‘The Dos snd Don’ts of Building Meaningful Relationships’

Sustainability Dinner

Our first RSE Fellows and Young Academy membership event, this networking dinner was aimed at stimulating discussion and future work encompassing this strategic theme.

YAS challenged five speakers to present on the topic of Sustainabillity in pecha-kucha style format.

Feedback for this event was overwhelmingly positive, and it is hoped that it will result in new project proposals encompassing this strategic theme.

A full report of this event may be found here.

Addressing Hate & Violence

A workshop event took place on 8^th July 2013, bringing together over 50 stakeholders comprising community activists, representatives from Police Scotland, central and local government, academia as well as members of faith, gender, sexual orientation and race groups.  Co-coordinated by YAS members Asif Ishaq and Jeffrey Murer, the event has a particular focus on societal wellbeing.  Delegates discussed their experience of the challenges facing Scotland’s diverse communities and explored possible approaches to build stronger communities. You can read a full report from the session here.

The Scottish Approach to Community

On the 2nd March, 2015, YAS hosted a workshop at the Royal Scots Club whichbrought together representatives of the Muslim Council of Scotland, the Church of Scotland, Police Scotland including the Scottish Muslim Police Association, Scottish Government, the Young Academy of Scotland, and a number of local NGOs and researchers from the Universities of St Andrews, Strathclyde, and Glasgow Caledonian.  22 people participated in the day-long event which focused on community engagement, cross-community tensions, and hate crime in Scotland.

Much of the discussion reflected on perceptions of radicalization, especially in light of the attacks in Paris on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. This led to further discussions on the politicization of speech, including questions as to whom has free speech and what are the responsibilities of the press in reporting conflict.

A member of the Muslim Council of Scotland said: “Imams are afraid of speaking out because they don’t want their words to be picked up and used in narratives out of context.  But then they are accused of not speaking out.  We need to address questions of care not to destroy someone’s language, otherwise we end up with no speech.”

A representative a Muslim youth organization from Glasgow further added on the topic of radicalization: “Young people feel really uncomfortable with the word “moderate”.  Many prefer more emotional and energized voices.  Many feel apologetic about being Muslim, rather than seeing this as a strength.  This is the current problem in the Muslim community: how to turn cultural tradition into pride rather than humility.  But the worry of “radicalization” makes that very difficult.

A representative of a different local NGO stated that a recent survey in the UK suggested that nearly 60% of British people believe that Islam is incompatible with values of the West.  She asked, “how are we supposed to be members of the community, how are we supposed to contribute, when we are seen as not fitting in before we do anything at all?”  This raised further questions as to how the police and Scottish Government interact with the various Muslim communities in Scotland to reinforce their belonging.

The workshop had both sessions of all participants and break-out sessions in which it was possible to have more engaged and intimate conversations.  These sessions raised questions as to the role of the media in both improving community relations and being held to account when they sensationalize stories and inflame community tensions. 

The workshop closed with a discussion of where to go in the future.  It was noted that members of the business community and the private sector should be invited to future events.  There was a focus on how does the police address these concerns if there is little diversity of understanding of the Muslim experience in Scotland.  While the meeting and the participants were upbeat, a concern permeated the workshop.  It appears that Scotland is more inviting to Muslims than England, as expressed by many of the participants; nevertheless, there was worry that things could easily turn worse.  Scotland still needs to work very hard to incorporate all of its communities into a rich and varied whole.  This was the desire of all of the workshop participants.

A Charter for Responsible Debate

Democracies pride themselves in allowing space for free political discussion as a way of peacefully working out compromises for how to live together in the context of opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation and competition over scarce resources. Because of this, we need ways of disagreeing with each other and yet achieving common ground. Politics has always been a place of disagreement and debate, but recent politics – especially in the age of social media – seems to be increasingly polarised.

To do begin to do so, the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Young Academy of Scotland is organising a 1-day event with politicians, media personalities, campaigners, activists and academics to share experience and propose possible principles for a draft Responsible Public Debate Charter for Scotland. The event will be hosted by Matthew Chrisman, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, with the help of fellow YAS members Alice Konig, Peter McColl, and John O’Connor.

More information about this event may be found here.

Nursing Stories from the First World War

At this event in November 2018 to mark the centenary of Armistice Day, Dr Diane Atkinson, a well-known author of women’s history read excerpts from and answered questions about her book Elsie and Mairi Go To War: Two Extraordinary Women on the Western Front, which focusses on nursing heroes during the First World War. This event was accompanied by a small public exhibit.  Both the event and the exhibition were joint projects between YAS and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Further videos of this event are available on the RSE YouTube page.

BREXIT: The Impact on Scotland"

In September 2017, we released a report on Brexit and its impact on Scotland. The report contains ten articles, each focusing on the impact of Brexit on a different area of society in Scotland, written by a YAS member who is an expert in that field. To read and download the report, visit our publications page.

Brexit Observatory

YAS began collecting case studies in Summer 2017 from those affected by the Brexit vote in Scotland in the research, innovation and further/higher education sectors. You can still contribute to these case studies, and read more about them here.
The the preliminary findings from the case studies were published in Autumn 2017, they can be read on our publications page.

Research the Headlines

Research the Headlines is a blog that addresses the way in which research is discussed and represented in the media. Launched by YAS in 2013 each article takes a piece of research with recent media coverage and seeks to investigate and research this to give readers a better understanding from an expert and independent position. The group of members that delivers Research the Headlines have also held workshops for schools with an aim to equipping children with the tools and skills to independently and critically evaluate the media.

FIRST LEGO League

In collaboration with our partner Lambda Jam, YAS coordinates  FIRST LEGO League (FLL) in Scotland.

FLL is an international robotics competition for children aged 9-16.  By challenging participants to build and programme LEGO robots to complete a set of tasks, FLL helps children develop maths, engineering and technical skills.  It also encourages students and their parents and teachers to consider these areas as potential careers, which is an important step towards closing the huge skills gap in these areas.

• Ran 3 tournaments across Scotland, in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee.
• Saw almost 500 children participating in 50 teams.
• Included one refugee team led by a YAS member from our At-Risk Academic and Refugee recruitment scheme.
• Sent 4 Scottish teams to the UK finals, 3 winning cups and 2 going on to further competitions.
• Increased engagement with robotics to 1000 children in Scotland, as a result of the commitment of our teams on full bursaries to provide full class teaching, and the CPD and support we give them to do that.
• Increased our Engineer Mentor Network, sending volunteer engineers into most teams to support their work and to enthuse them about a career in engineering.

Our key sponsor is IET.

Numeracy Counts

Numeracy Counts is a resource working within the numeracy area of Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence. Utilising the YAS membership's diverse and multi-disciplinary nature, YAS produced a series of videos and resources to show how numeracy matters in a variety of different careers as well as its importance in everyday life. To view at some of the videos visit our YouTube channel here.