Westminster’s Active Travel Academy hosted an event with transport consultancy Steer to celebrate their recent collaboration. Together, they aim to produce reader-friendly summaries of academic research, making the Academy’s groundbreaking work more accessible to active travel practitioners worldwide.
On 10 December, around 70 active travel policymakers and practitioners gathered to celebrate the groundbreaking collaboration between the Active Travel Academy, University of Westminster Press’ journal Active Travel Studies and the transport consultancy Steer.
Steer is supporting the creation of accessible, reader-friendly summaries of key research papers from the Active Travel Studies journal in English and other global languages including French, Spanish, Arabic and Mandarin. These summaries can be read by practitioners in just ten minutes, compared to the hour or more it typically takes to navigate an 8,000-word academic paper. Improving accessibility to academic research and breaking down barriers to knowledge will allow busy active travel professionals such as policymakers and politicians to quickly understand and incorporate evidence-based strategies into active travel initiatives globally, empowering them to drive meaningful change in communities worldwide.
At the event, attendees were welcomed by representatives from Steer, the University of Westminster and Westminster University Press. The evening featured a range of presentations, including one from Dr Robert Egan from Trinity College Dublin, who discussed his Active Travel Studies article on why teenage boys cycle more frequently than girls and what can be done to reduce this disparity.
The Active Travel Academy at Westminster is renowned for producing innovative research in the field of active travel, including a groundbreaking research paper exploring the cycling experiences of UK-based women of colour by Dulce Pedroso, PhD student and Fellow at the Active Travel Academy, co-authored by Professor Rachel Aldred, Professor of Transport and Director of the Active Travel Academy.
Dr Tom Cohen, Reader in Transport at the University of Westminster, said: “We’re delighted to be working with Steer on this initiative. We’ve always been proud that Active Travel Studies is open access, but we know that busy policymakers and practitioners struggle to find the time to read full academic articles. By providing an accessible digest that can be read in a few minutes, we hope the research we publish will reach a broader audience and have a bigger impact. Even more so, given that we’re translating these summaries into four languages other than English. We’re also excited that Steer is organising a webinar to accompany each of the lay summaries being published.”
The work of the Active Travel Academy and Steer directly contributes to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, 13: Climate Action and 17: Partnerships for the Goals. Since 2019, the University of Westminster has used the SDGs holistically to frame strategic decisions to help students and colleagues fulfil their potential and contribute to a more sustainable, equitable and healthier society.
Find out more about the Active Travel Academy at the University of Westminster.
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