In April 2025, Lauren and Will gave a keynote for the iHuman and PGR funded event entitled 'Joy in Social Research'. This was led by Bev Enion, Charlie Grosset and Tom Ryan. The event was beautifully illustrated too! You can read more about it here. 

In April 2025, Lauren represented the joyful learning project and presented alongside colleagues across the University of Sheffield for the Education conference. Together, we came together to respond to the question, 'What makes learning engaging and enjoyable?' You can find out more about the education conference here. 

We were delighted that the project was invited to give a short film on participatory ethics. We focused on the importance of co-production partnerships between staff and students and centring joy in doing social research and learning! You can find out more and watch the video here. 

We're delighted to announce that the Joyful Learning team won a Education Award for the category of 'Staff-student Partnership and Co-production in Education'. Thank you to all involved in the project and to those who've championed it! Find out more here.  

On the 28th May 2024, Lauren and Will presented, 'Towards Joyful Learning' at the Widening Participation Lunchtime Learn Seminar. We presented an empirical case for taking joy (and enjoyment) seriously in order to create more inclusive, meaningful and connected educational environments. We advocated for moving towards joyful learning to realise more inclusive and generative learning environments for everyone, especially those from widening participation backgrounds. You can find out more about the Widening Participation work within the Faculty via their Education Edit page here. 

This blog is written to explain the project and to make key suggestions for educators who Elevate support. You can read this here. 

This blog is written to explain the project and preliminary findings of what our students have to say about joy in education! You can read this here.