We design and run in-person Responsible Research and Innovation workshops for UK universities and Centres for Doctoral Training. You tell us about your team. We take care of the scoping, the design, the facilitation, and what happens after the room empties.
Delivered for cohorts at
Responsible innovation is no longer optional in UK doctoral training. EPSRC builds it into every cohort.
UKRI's Good Research Resource Hub now treats responsible innovation as standard practice rather than a bolt-on, and the current EPSRC funding call asks every Centre for Doctoral Training to grow an RRI culture across its cohort programme. The AREA framework sits behind most of it: four short verbs (Anticipate, Reflect, Engage, Act) applied through the four Ps of Process, Product, Purpose and People. CDTs are expected to show AREA in their training plans, their annual UKRI returns, and their final reporting.
The honest catch is that the breadth of expertise needed to teach AREA well rarely lives in one department. Foresight, stakeholder engagement, the ethics of AI and quantum systems, research culture, the politics of UK research; few CDTs have all of that on staff. Most solve it the same way: they bring in a specialist partner who can scope the work across disciplines, and let their PIs get back to research, not facilitation.
That is what we were set up to do. We design and deliver responsible-innovation training for UK universities, Centres for Doctoral Training, Doctoral Training Partnerships and research institutes, shaped to the real projects and people in the room. And the same need has now arrived in industry: since February 2025 the EU AI Act has placed a legal duty on organisations to ensure their people are AI-literate, so we bring the same method to the companies building and deploying technology. The goal, every time, is the same: a working habit, not a compliance exercise.
Every commission is scoped to your group. Format, sequencing and case studies are tailored before delivery.
A working introduction to Responsible Research and Innovation, the EPSRC AREA framework and the 4Ps in practice. Our flagship.
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Build ethical, inclusive and impactful engagement strategies, with practical stakeholder mapping and feedback tools.
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Practical strategies for eco-conscious research practice across energy, waste, materials and procurement.
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Embed ethical considerations across the lifecycle of AI, robotics and big data research, from objective setting through deployment.
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Research security, integrity, intellectual property protection and dual-use awareness for international collaborations.
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Data protection, classification, retention and compliance for research organisations operating under UK GDPR.
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A one-day workshop combining hands-on technical problem-solving with structured ethical reflection.
→Four short verbs, run together through the life of a project, across the four Ps of Process, Product, Purpose and People. We teach AREA using the cases your team is already wrestling with, not generic examples.
What might your research bring into the world? Map the economic, social and environmental consequences before they arrive.
Why are we doing this work? Surface the assumptions, motivations and uncertainties shaping the project.
Who else should have a say? Open the work to the stakeholders and publics it will affect.
Now change something. Feed what you've learned back into the research itself, shaping its direction as it unfolds.
We design and run in-person Responsible Research and Innovation training for UK universities, Centres for Doctoral Training, Doctoral Training Partnerships and research institutes. The training is group-based, scoped to your discipline, and built around the EPSRC AREA framework. Alongside the paid courses we publish three free tools and three thirty-minute intro courses that anyone can use without an account.
The short answer is no - we don't sell individual seats. Our courses are scoped to a group: format, sequencing, exercises and case studies are chosen to fit the discipline and the projects in the room. Individual seats would dilute the thing that makes the training work. If you are a researcher looking for a self-led starting point, our free Intro to RRI covers the foundations in about half an hour, and our free tools let you run a real diagnostic on your own project.
Yes - we are one of the established external RRI partners for UKRI Centres for Doctoral Training and Doctoral Training Partnerships. Where you have in-house RRI leads we work alongside them. Where you don't, we run the whole programme. Our team has worked with CDTs at Oxford, Sheffield, Bath, Cardiff and other UK institutions, plus a handful of partner organisations overseas. The CDT page goes into more detail.
Every course is built around the EPSRC AREA framework: Anticipate, Reflect, Engage, Act, applied through the four Ps of Process, Product, Purpose and People. We translate UKRI's responsible innovation expectations into discipline-specific exercises, so cohorts leave with an AREA-shaped analysis of their own projects. That gives directors something concrete to point to in EPSRC monitoring returns and annual reporting, not a generic ethics overview. If you want the framework on its own, the AREA 4P page is a plain-English read.
In-person and group-based. We come to your campus or to a residential venue you choose. Formats range from a single facilitated day to multi-day retreats and modular series threaded through a whole doctoral programme. We bring the facilitators, the materials and the AREA exercises; you bring the room, the group, and the discipline context that makes it land. Cohorts of fifteen to forty work best, though we have run sessions for smaller research groups and full-department training days on request.
Yes, in two flavours. The three free intro courses (RRI, Stakeholder Engagement, PAS 440) are fully self-serve in the browser - no account, no payment, no tracker. For paid courses, when an organisation commissions training we can issue access codes that open the same materials online via our codeless courses portal. The cohort still works through the content together, with the same exercises and AREA framing, but they do it from wherever they are. Hybrid formats - a residential followed by online modules, or the reverse - work well too.
We are a UK not-for-profit, so our pricing reflects what it costs to deliver, not a commercial margin. Fees depend on cohort size, days, location, and how much we tailor to your discipline; most CDT engagements sit comfortably inside standard EPSRC training budgets. Six to twelve weeks ahead is the sweet spot for booking, particularly for summer-term residentials, though shorter notice is sometimes fine. After a first conversation we send a written quote within a few working days, with no obligation to take it.
Yes, and that's exactly why the free side of the site exists. The AREA 4P framework, Keys of RRI and RRI Maturity pages cover the conceptual ground. Three free thirty-minute intro courses (RRI, Stakeholder Engagement, PAS 440) run in your browser with no account or sign-up. And three free tools let you diagnose a real project, an organisation, or a gap. Everything runs locally; we don't store anything unless you choose to share.
Codes are issued when an organisation commissions our paid courses for a cohort. The fastest route is the Redeem a code item in the main menu - paste the code and we detect whether it opens a course, a saved tool result or a certificate, and send the researcher to the right place. Codes are valid for twelve months. They carry everything needed to open the content, but nothing about the person, and nothing is stored on our side.
A few lines about your team, the topics you want covered, and roughly when. We come back within one working day with a suggested fit and a fixed quote.
