Junior Scientist

Involving children and families in our work and being able to give back to our local community is really important to us. That is why we established the Junior Scientist programme in 2022.

Junior Scientist is a programme of educational and fun activities for primary school aged children held in the school summer holidays, run by our team of Developmental Scientists from the Department of Psychology. As part of the event, families can book on to a free 2.5-hour session during the 3-day programme in August (school summer holidays), where they come along and engage in a host of fun activities and take part in research studies. The event is generously supported by Collingwood College, who allow us to host the event in college. The event is designed to have a positive impact on our local community while promoting and supporting ongoing research that involves children - children take part in research while attending the Junior Scientist event. The Junior Scientist event supports diverse, inclusive, and reproducible research, but most importantly, it positively engages children and young people in psychological science.

Since Junior Scientist was established in 2022 we have welcomed over 400 children to the University to take part – many of whom had never been to visit the University before. The feedback we have received from parents and carers shows just how much the children benefit from the experience:

• “Excitement about the big world, seeing a university, interacting with different people, exploring a different range of activities”
• “Improved their confidence and interacting with people”
• “They found it fun and knew it was for the purpose of research, so felt important”
• “My son was very inspired to go to university and he's only 8!”
• “She's not stopped talking about it and has been trying some of the experiments out on her younger sister” 
• “They questioned their thinking, it made them curious” 
• “She did not think Science was fun - I can keep emphasising because of today, Science is fun and today proved it.” 

For news and updates about upcoming Junior Scientist events, see here.

For enquires, please email juniorscientist@durham.ac.uk