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Get Involved!
The SDG Impact Lab provides a rare opportunity for students to learn and collaborate across disciplines, harnessing diversity as a strength to deliver solutions to complex environmental and social challenges.
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Get Involved!
The SDG Impact Lab provides a rare opportunity for students to learn and collaborate across disciplines, harnessing diversity as a strength to deliver solutions to complex environmental and social challenges.
-
Get Involved!
The SDG Impact Lab provides a rare opportunity for students to learn and collaborate across disciplines, harnessing diversity as a strength to deliver solutions to complex environmental and social challenges.
Take your first step toward sustainable change. Applications close at 12 noon on 3rd February 2025 for the Oxford Laidlaw Scholars Programme. Don’t miss our Q&A session on 23rd January 2025, connect with current Scholars, ask your questions, and discover how you can contribute to meaningful global impact!
The Oxford SDG Impact Lab Fellowships offer graduate students the chance to tackle real-world challenges aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Fellows complete an eight-week Masterclass Series and selected Fellows then join the Partner Project Programme, collaborating with businesses and community partners, potentially through a 2-6 week summer placement with a stipend. For more information, visit our FAQs.
2025 Fellowship applications have closed, download the programme information for guidance purposes. Get ready for 2026!
The Oxford Laidlaw Scholars Programme is an 18-month programme offering first-year undergraduates hands-on project experience, leadership workshops, and collaboration on impactful local and global initiatives, with a stipend provided. Scholars join an Oxford group leadership retreat in Year 1, and in Year 2, attend the Laidlaw International Scholars Conference and complete a global Leadership in Action project. For more information, visit Laidlaw Application Guidance.
Please ensure you have thoroughly read the guidance and evaluation criteria before submitting your application.
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.
Lab Fellows
Our network comprises 136 postgraduate fellows from over 45 countries, each bringing a wealth of valuable experience. Their backgrounds span founding social enterprises, policy development within governments and NGOs, and hands-on business experience—from launching start-ups to working in the oil and gas industry. Among them, we even have a part-time professional opera singer!
The skillsets of our Lab Fellows are further enriched by the breadth of their studies. They are pursuing advanced degrees across a wide range of fields, from doctorates in Engineering, Politics, Biology, Philosophy in Law, Experimental Psychology, Classics, and Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, to MBAs and Master’s degrees in Anthropology, Public Policy, Social Data Science, Inorganic Chemistry for Future Manufacturing, Environmental Change and Management, Economics, History, Medicine, and Energy Systems, among others.
United by a shared commitment, our Fellows are dedicated to taking action that advances the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and makes a positive impact globally.
“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.“