Changing Behaviour at Bangor University

Over 40 academics attended our Research Innovation workshop on behaviour change. I don’t think I am exaggerating when I say that it was a vibrant and excited crowd of people who we keen to make the most of the 4 hour session. There were some hungry looking faces by the end, but talk of obesity and poor health kept us all in check. Inventorium ran the workshop (primarily Dyfan and Martin) which really helped to bring us all out of our shy shells. A lot of discussion and ideas sharing followed.

A long term aim of these workshops is to increase the number and quality of interdisciplinary research projects (whether externally funded, or in-house pilot projects). A shorter term goal was to end the workshop with some concrete ideas of potential projects. We had ideas about “Promoting Healthy Habits” through Stimulus-Response learning; a computer modelling project incorporating implicit representations of value and behaviour; one entitled “What is the impact of a Retail Distribution Review regulation on commission-based sales”; a project looking at helping adults to experience ‘play’ and so promote wellbeing; an organisational behaviour change project looking at the Welsh language;  and a project looking at exercise adherence in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.

It will be interesting to see how these develop. One role of the Interdisciplinary Research Leads (John Parkinson, Jerry Hunter, Tom DeLuca) is to follow these up and help support their fruition. This workshop was also the first of a rolling programme of events that will hopefully reach all corners of Bangor University research.