Any community or voluntary sector organisation can use our services, we will help you and your organisation develop a research project based on the questions you have expressed.

We will guide you through the entire research process and help you to design your project.

Students who will be working on our projects will normally have had research training and will also have an academic supervisor from the university guiding and supervising their research.

Which university should I contact to discuss my research idea?

You can contact either Queen’s University Belfast or the University of Ulster. Any information you give to one university is passed along to the other and a student may come through from either university to work on your project.

We are delighted you are are interested in collaborating with us! 

If a student is interested in your project we will contact you. If you are happy to go ahead a meeting will be arranged between you, the student and one of our staff members.  

At the meeting we will discuss the general scope of the project, what needs to be done, what methods will be used and how long it will take. If everyone reaches an agreement we will draw up a contract between you and the student. 

However, if either party feels at this stage that they don’t want to proceed, it is still possible to withdraw until the agreement is signed.

Once a project has been discussed it is placed on the Science Shop database, advertised and communicated to students across both universities. It is important that students choose a project that is meaningful to them and unfortunately it is not possible to guarantee that a student will take up your project within a given timescale.  

For students who chose to complete a Science Shop project the completion date of a project will also vary depending on the student and the level of their degree i.e. undergraduate or masters.