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Research projects

Behind great research is collaboration and strong relationships built with businesses and other institutions, and that’s what you’ll find at the core of all our research projects.

Research awards and grants

We’ve been awarded multiple EU grants for projects looking at business models to support assisted living for older people through technological innovation.

To help the government understand how training investments increase productivity, we’ve also been funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) have awarded us national funding to better understand how small firms deal with regulation.

We’ve also won prestigious international awards such as the Newton Fellowship, funded by the Royal Society and British Academy for research looking at entrepreneurship in East Asia.

Ongoing impact

These awards and grants highlight our ongoing commitment to ensuring that our research projects are addressing relevant contemporary issues.

All of our projects, both past and current, contribute to significant research that has real social impact. It’s valuable to practitioners and policy makers, as well as to our academic colleagues and students. Take a look at our projects below.

Past projects

Biz4Age (Business Opportunities for Healthy Ageing) was a €600,000 project funded by the EU under the INTERREG IVA 2 Seas Programme.

Its purpose was to understand the best ways to respond to the challenges of ageing populations in ways that increase the effectiveness and efficiency of care, support independent living, and create regional business opportunities.

Biz4Age brought together partners from England (Kent, Cambridgeshire), The Netherlands (Zeeland), Belgium (West-Flanders) and France (Nord-pas-de-Calais).

Find out more about Biz4Age

The CURA-B (acCURAte-Business) project focused on promoting entrepreneurship and the development of new cross-border initiatives.

It was a three-year, priority 1 EU ERDF project, part-funded through the Joint Technical Secretariat INTERREG IVA 2 Mers programme. ARU's role was to provide social science support and direction to the project.

It focussed on how innovation may be improved by drawing lessons from the use of different forms of assistive technology and by helping local agencies, firms and care-providers develop models suitable for effective, integrated health care provision.

Find out more about CURA-B

Innovation 50 was a three-year research project focusing on innovation in high-growth Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Essex (UK).

Launched in 2015, and funded by Essex County Council, its aims were to establish the key determinants of high growth for local SMEs, assess their innovation performance and identify their innovation support requirements.

Find out more about Innovation 50

This national project, initially funded by the Women into Science and Engineering Campaign (WISE) with support from Amazon UK, investigates women leaders in innovation routes in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) organisations.

The project has now moved onto identifying gender economics related to these issues and to exploring female STEM entrepreneurs to determine if they show the same factors in their STEM career journeys.

Find out more about Routes to Leadership; Women in STEM Innovation

SEAS2Grow (Silver Economy Accelerating Strategies 2 Grow) was an EU funded project helped to accelerate the use of innovative products and services for the Silver Economy market (the term given to the demand for age-related goods and services due to demographic change).

SEAS2Grow was an Interreg 2 Seas programme 2014-2020, co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund.

Working with the Faculty of Health, Education, Medicine and Social Care to provide a business accelerator, ARU's School of Business and Management led the UK’s participation in the project, alongside three other participating regions: France, Belgium, Netherlands.

Find out more about Seas2Grow

The theme of this conference was ‘the legal autonomy of sport’, a concept long treasured by sports governing bodies, but which is perceived by some now to be a cloak for lack of democracy and fair process.

Within this overall theme, there were three strands reflecting the three conference sessions: contractual, political and legal autonomy.

We heard from experts in European Union law, lex sportiva, regulatory law, competition law, employment law, criminal law, commercial law, and international law. Our media partner for the conference was Law in Sport.

Find out more about Sports Law Conference 2016