Environment submissions database

Leeds Trinity University closed its campus on 17th March 2020, switching to fully online provision and working from home just prior to the First National Lockdown. In the Autumn of 2020, the institution mitigated the risks to academic staff, taught postgraduates, and undergraduates via a blended learning offer that continued during the Second Lockdown. The institution switched to a fully online offer again in the Third Lockdown. Throughout this period, from 17th March 2020, all staff members in the Research and Knowledge Exchange Office, and many colleagues who support research in other professional and support services, have worked fully from home. Initial impacts for category A staff due to Covid-19 emerged in March 2020, when all staff members, including Support and Professional Services team members, Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) and postgraduate researchers (PGRs) who had been given opportunities to develop skills in teaching (in support of their PGCert HE), needed to support the institution’s rapid switch to fully online provision. Subsequently, the fitness suite and sports halls were closed to researchers from March 2020. Having been made Covid-secure, sports facilities were later repurposed (30th November 2020) and remain as the University’s site for lateral flow testing. This has been detrimental to researchers in UoA24 Sport, especially the Enhancing Human Performance research theme. Negative impacts on staff and PGRs in UoA24 engaged in data collection on-site in the University’s only indoor sports facilities have therefore been extensive and persistent, alongside their inability to access professional and competitive sporting events and training in gyms. Shocks to dissemination, pathways for impact and gathering evidence as part of impact planning for staff engaged with the sports, industrial and heritage sectors, and with education partners in schools, have also been especially marked: • Sport’s Impact Case Studies have been affected by the delay of key sporting events such as the Olympics 2020 (Menthol-focused case study) and the 2020 UEFA European Football Championships (Enhancing team sports performance case study); these delays have hindered the collection of more impact evidence where their underpinning research was scheduled to be implemented. • For researchers in UoA27, English and Creative Writing, there has been significantly reduced access to venues for performance and public engagement. For example, the long-established Leeds Trinity Writers’ Festival for 2020 was cancelled, and exhibitions at the Thackray Medical Museum co-curated by three members of this unit, during its £4 million redevelopment, due to open March 2020 have not been opened to the public. • Researchers in UoA23 Education were unable to access Schools, and unable to support collaborators with local education authorities and associated support services in delivering support to Schools based on their underpinning research on supporting families. Leeds Trinity has followed closely the support measures implemented by its accrediting institution (the University of Leeds) to mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on PGRs as far as is possible. A total of 22 extensions/suspensions have been approved specifically relating to the Covid-19 pandemic.