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The SDG Impact Lab provides a rare opportunity for postgraduate students to learn and collaborate across disciplines, harnessing diversity as a strength to deliver solutions to complex environmental and social challenges.
The SDG Impact Lab Masterclass Series in an eight-week course focused on how to make progress towards the SDGs. It is underpinned by three core curriculum areas:
Ethics- How do we know what is right?
We offer training in responsible leadership, underpinned by values, purpose and character.
Evidence- How do we know what works?
We provide students with applied research skills relevant to business, policy, and community engagement.
Engagement- How do we deliver impactful change?
We deliver training in project management, organisational change, and effective communication and presentation skills.
Each session will focus on one or more of the SDGs with expert input from Oxford faculty, business, and community leaders. There will be a group and peer learning component as well as case studies of projects delivered by previous Lab Fellows.
For further information about the sessions take a look at the full programme and read student testimonials.
Our unique and interactive programmes aim to provide students with the transferrable skills needed to work with business and non-academic partners to deliver real-world change.
This includes a research project at a partner-specific Field Lab at the start of the Summer vacation. Students work in teams, engaging with stakeholders and applying research methods to develop project proposals.
The result of the Field Lab is an implementable and evidence-based proposal relating to one or more of the SDGs.
Our student Fellows are drawn from across the University reflecting our commitment to interdisciplinary learning.
2024 Lab Fellows
The 2024 Masterclass cohort comprises 68 postgraduate fellows hailing from 30 countries. They bring with them a variety of valuable previous experience; from founding social enterprises, policy development within Governments and NGOs to direct business experience establishing start-ups through to working in the oil and gas industry. There's even a part-time professional opera singer in their midst!
Our Lab Fellows skillset is further enhanced by the breadth of their studies; we have Fellows studying for doctorates in subjects including Engineering, Politics, Biology, Experimental Psychology and Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics to MBAs and Masters in Public Policy, Social Data Science, Environmental Change and Management, Economics and Energy Systems plus many more.
Our Fellows are united in their desire and commitment to take action to advance the SDGs.
“The chance to present our team's energy efficiency initiative to the senior leadership team at BMW's MINI Plant was an unparalleled experience. In that boardroom, I felt the weight and significance of our achievements. I realized that the project we had nurtured was no longer an academic exercise confined to research papers and simulation models; it was a viable, impactful solution deserving boardroom-level attention.“