Professor Kiran Trehan is an internationally recognised scholar in knowledge exchange, engagement and impact. Her research specialises in how diversity and inequality is experienced by minority groups. She has longstanding research experience of the key issues affecting minorities in business and communities and has led an extensive number of ESRC and AHRC funded research activities which are distinguished by user engagement, innovation, and community orientation.

Professor Trehan’s work has helped cast new light on academic debate. Her research findings have been influential in shaping national and European policy including the OECD, as well regional communities. She has studied and led engagement and impact projects across a range of contexts and disciplines to illuminate what works and why. Her work on how engagement and knowledge transfer has been leveraged to generate deep and sustainable change through the research developed evidenced based tools to ensure research impact changes the way we generate and share knowledge that facilitates purposeful and beneficial change. Through robust, evidence-led research, her work has developed new approaches to the use of research in supporting and delivering policy and practitioner engagement, learning and impact.

As a Co-Investigator for the ESRC Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre, Professor Trehan chairs the Centre’s National Engagement Group (NEG). The purpose of the NEG is to support national policy engagement, provide advice on policy, practice and research developments and opportunities, and ensure effective connections between the Centre and relevant national stakeholders and user groups.

The NEG also serves to support and enhance the dissemination and application of research and innovation, with a particular remit to support the Centre’s impact and engagement strategy. The NEG will facilitate and foster strategic discussions and help initiate system-level thinking and new multi-sectoral working to support and advance the Centre’s aims.