Research & Innovation 2026 – A Celebration Of Collaborations And Partnerships

Exploring the interconnected themes of health, wellbeing, and innovation across the life course, the sessions will emphasis the importance of collaboration between academic researchers, NHS partners, and industry in addressing key challenges, including healthy ageing, advanced diagnostics, and improving mental health outcomes.

By integrating cutting-edge research with clinical expertise and technological development, we will highlight how early detection, personalised care, and preventative approaches can enhance both physical and mental wellbeing. It will showcase how cross-sector partnerships accelerate the translation of discovery into practice, leading to more effective interventions and improved patient experiences.

Through these collaborations, we demonstrate a shared commitment to supporting longer, healthier lives and building more resilient, healthy communities.

Focused on showcasing how research-led innovation is enabling the transition to low-carbon, high-value, and globally competitive industries, the sessions will highlight Swansea University’s long-standing and strategic collaborations with industry, a growing supply chain and network of companies in advanced semiconductor materials and power electronics to hydrogen technologies, renewable and distributed energy systems, and efficient energy-generating buildings. Our partnerships underpin research that is directly addressing the challenges of industrial decarbonisation, electrification, AI energy demand, digitalisation, and energy efficiency, aligned with Net Zero Wales and national priorities.

What makes a place feel like home? These sessions celebrate the people, places, histories and cultures that shape who we are, while exploring how these strengths can help create a better future. Through a lively mix of lightning talks, project presentations and discussion, we will touch on issues that matter in many different settings — from online safety, safer streets and voting behaviour to environmental protection, local heritage and discoveries that bring the past to life. They will also highlight collaborative work with a wide range of partners, showing how research can support stronger communities, a greater sense of belonging and richer connections with the world around us.

Growing numbers of scholars and journalists are describing the current historical moment as a “polycrisis”. The idea is that we are experiencing simultaneous and severe challenges related to climate change, geopolitical instability, economic stagnation, and technological change all of which are threatening human well-being. But going further, polycrisis implies that these challenges are not just intersecting in dangerous ways, but possibly reinforcing one another in an intensifying feedback loop. One effect of this intersecting set of crises is a growing sense of complexity and uncertainty in social, political, and biophysical systems. One thing that does seem certain is that almost nowhere on Earth will be unaffected by these unfolding challenges.

As well as how the global polycrisis is effecting our local region, these sessions also aim to consider, if not celebrate, how intersecting, interdisciplinary and collaborative solutions are already making a difference for building a resilient Wales for the future. In other words, we aim to highlight not just self-reinforcing problems, but ways that collaborative solutions can reinforce one another.