Exploring not-for-profit oriented Sharing Economy schemes

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

The proposed CDT for Digital Civics aims to develop a cohort of 60+ students engaged in theorising, designing, developing, and evaluating personal & community-based digital technologies to explore and create forms of civic engagement that support local communities, local service provision, and local democracy. The CDT will work directly with several local authorities (in the Northeast of England), a variety of SMEs and NGOs and some larger international corporations. As such there are various potential beneficiaries of the CDT.

Firstly, there are the students themselves who will graduate as highly skilled academic and applied researchers - well-versed in interdisciplinary collaboration and trained to transfer, leverage and exploit the insight generated from their research and who are able to contribute to the economic and social development of the UK.

The research they will conduct will be focused on supporting local communities, and given the aim to enhance public service provision and support engagement in local issues. It is likely that their research will enhance quality of life, health and wellbeing in these areas, improve social welfare and social cohesion in the participating communities and generally increase public awareness of social and economic issues that are likely to be affecting these research participants, and this will be done at various levels from older adults through to school-aged communities.

The research is also intended to have impact at a Government level, and through our direct collaboration with our participating local authority partners student research projects will directly influence policy making at local, regional and national levels. Case-based research will transform evidence-based policy, and provide evidence to support changing organisational cultures and practices (for example enhancing the role of public participation in local governance) and through shaping and enhancing the effectiveness of public services, by directly designing and developing digital augmentations. As such the research projects directly intend to enhance the efficiency, performance and sustainability of public services through the user-centred development of new digital technologies and the promotion of local activism and civic engagement.

Another significant impact of the CDT will be the development and training of skilled people in non-academic professions through the development and open-sourcing of learning materials, which aim to transfer research insight (including skills and processes as much as research 'findings') to non-academic organisations, such as SMEs, NGOs and larger corporations (sourced through our broad partner network). These SMEs, NGOs and corporations (alongside the doctoral students themselves) are also likely to be commercial beneficiaries of the research. Active processes of knowledge transfer will directly contribute towards wealth creation and economic prosperity by supporting the enhancement of research capacity, knowledge and skills in businesses and organisations and through the commercialisation of research in the formation of spin-out companies to serve the private, public and third sectors.