• Question: do you think your research will have a good impact on society?

    Asked by krystyna to Ben, Sam, Kirsty, Maggi, Rose on 12 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Maggi Laurie

      Maggi Laurie answered on 12 Jun 2017:


      I’m sure that every scientist certainly hopes that their research will have a good impact 🙂

      I hope that mine will, because despite autistic people being about 1% of our society, autism is very poorly understood. In fact, there’s no certain answer on what causes autism, what autism actually is (the criteria used for diagnosing autism have changed about every 10 years since the beginning of autism research) and what is the best way to support an autistic person to learn the social skills that they need in society. I hope that the research that I am doing will help us answer the last question – to find out whether new technologies are useful tools for supporting autistic children in social interactions. In terms of impact, technology is much cheaper than paying a therapist to teach an autistic child how to socialise, and technology is much more inclusive (every kid at school has a smart-phone or tablet, they are much more trendy, than a portable speech-generation device from the 80s). I hope that this would make teachers, schools, and the children themselves happier, and that’s the impact I would like to have.

    • Photo: Rose Turner

      Rose Turner answered on 12 Jun 2017:


      I really hope so. It would be great for society as a whole to be more empathic (better at understanding how other people think and feel) towards others. For me, that is the basis of being kind, understanding and peaceful. My research looks at how the arts can make us more empathic towards others, so I hope my research will help me show how people can best improve their empathic skills.

    • Photo: Ben Kenward

      Ben Kenward answered on 12 Jun 2017:


      At the moment I am mainly trying to understand the desire to punish. I really hope that if we understand more about why people want criminals who have done bad things to be punished, then we can improve the way we deal with criminals. Lots of people go to prison when it doesn’t actually help anyone – people tend to commit more crimes after they have been in prison, not less. But this doesn’t stop a lot of people want to lock people up and throw away the key. I think maybe we can help people to see things differently if we understand this better.

    • Photo: Kirsty Miller

      Kirsty Miller answered on 12 Jun 2017:


      I hope so! When I give talks people often tell me that they can see how my work relates to their own lives and that means a lot to me. For example, often people will say that they have experienced situations where their friends make them feel good, or really bring them down or make them feel like they have to do things they don’t want to. The research I’ve done about the ways in which your social groups can affect how you feel can help us develop programmes which can improve people’s mental health (cheaply and easily!) so hopefully these will be used soon to prevent mental health problems and help cure them.

    • Photo: Sam Carr

      Sam Carr answered on 13 Jun 2017:


      I hope so. I guess that at the end of the day my research is about understanding just how important warm, nurturing, loving human connections can be – and realizing that sometimes we (as a society) create situations and structures that sort of get in the way of people developing these connections. I think society would be a better place if we really aimed to help people feel loved and connected – but we so often don’t. We have a generation of older people who feel crippling levels of loneliness and isolation – and it doesn’t have to be that way. We have high levels of domestic violence and severe relationship conflict – it doesn’t have to be that way…I could go on…and on…

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