A defining characteristic of UNIC is its strong and vital partnership with the post-industrial cities across the consortium, as university partners work hand-in-hand with city institutions.

Through CityLabs and Engaged Research, UNIC contributes to the urban resilience and renaissance of post-industrial cities.

In UCC this work is led via Civic and Community Engagement and the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation.

UNIC CityLabs

CityLabs bring together UCC staff and students, city and community staff, and citizens to solve societal challenges together in innovative ways.

Find out more about UNIC CityLabs on the unic.eu site, where you can also be inspired by cases of successful CityLabs in the Open Case Repository.

Engaged Research

Engaged Research is an integral part of the research culture at UCC and engaged research generally drives impact on grand societal challenges such as the Sustainable Development Goals.

Engaged Research is an overarching or umbrella term describing a wide range of research approaches and methodologies, each having a core intent of collaborative engagement ‘with’ and ‘within’ society.

Through UNIC, UCC makes an explicit commitment to engaged research in partnership with city stakeholders with a clear ambition to achieve societal impact.

UNIC4ER (UNIC for Engaged Research) supports engaged research and is funded separately to UNIC. The project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101035801.