Our Flagships
We have flagship areas of expertise in health and rehabilitation, sustainable business and creativity and culture. Like all our teaching, research and knowledge exchange work, the outputs of our flagship areas are designed to be thoroughly relevant to society’s needs.
Work within our flagships areas tackles issues ranging from developing a more person-centred approach to patient care, to the development of healthcare systems across the world; from providing dialogue tools which allow marginalised groups to have their voices heard, to giving people their voice more literally through innovations in speech therapy; and from improving complaint handling to ensuring good corporate governance.
Health and Rehabilitation
This flagship area is underpinned by our portfolio of health courses: we have the widest range of allied health professional courses of any university in Scotland. Our research is focused on policy and practice, and therefore has an immediate practical impact in terms of service delivery and patient care.
We have capitalised on our broad range of health courses to become leaders in inter-professional education. This ensures that our teaching and research reaches beyond the limits of professional boundaries, providing fresh insights and helping to ensure that healthcare professionals from different areas work together effectively with positive consequences for patient care.
Our work has a global reach. One example is our Institute for Global Health and Development. Another is our work in international nurse education, which sees us develop nursing faculty academic staff in overseas colleges and universities.
Research and knowledge exchange centres relevant to the area of health and rehabilitation:
Clinical Audiology, Speech and Language Research Centre
Centre for Health, Activity and Rehabilitation Research
Centre for Person-centred Practice Research
Sustainable Business
A member of the Chartered Association of Business Schools, our approach to teaching and research in business related subjects is distinctive in three ways
- Our focus on providing the optimum balance of theoretical and practical approaches, with strong industry links.
- Our emphasis on the need for ethical, social and ecological responsibility in business. We take the view that sustainable businesses are profitable, effective and efficient, with a long-term horizon, and contribute to both economies and communities.
- Our entrepreneurial focus. Our students benefit from the University’s Business Innovation Zone (which hosts start-ups) and on-campus Business Gateway, and many go on to create their own businesses.
We are recognised internationally for our work in international hospitality and tourism: we have students on our programmes in various countries across the world. We are innovators in the subject area of events management. We also have a wide range of expertise relating to understanding consumer motivations and behaviour, and on approaches to dispute resolution. In recent years, we have become well known for our work in public services administration and governance.
Research and knowledge exchange centres and groups relevant to the area of sustainable business:
Centre for Applied Social Sciences
Consumer Dispute Resolution Centre
Family and Smaller Enterprise Research Group
Creativity and Culture
Long recognised for our work in creativity and culture, we bring together media, PR, events and performing arts students in one academic school to maximise opportunities for inter-disciplinary work. This flagship area also encompasses psychology and sociology.
We are well known for our performing arts programmes. In these courses, our approach is to challenge conventional assumptions and to encourage our students to embrace a variety of aesthetic practices and build collaborative partnerships that will feed the industry of tomorrow.
We have expertise in cultural arts management and produce graduates which go on to make a real impact in the cultural sector and we research cultural policy.
We are a leading provider of education in public relations and have a particular expertise in dialogue.
In 2019, we added initial teacher education to our course portfolio, drawing on our existing expertise to develop education courses with a focus on wellbeing, resilience, child welfare and inequality.
Research and knowledge exchange centres and groups relevant to the area of creativity and culture:
Centre for Applied Social Sciences
Our Dialogue, Participation and Engagement Research Space
Centre for Communication, Cultural and Media Studies
Memory Research Group
