UCLan announces partnership with the European Space Agency

18 October 2018

The agreement will facilitate an investigation into public value

The University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) has partnered with the European Space Agency (ESA) to explore factors relating to public value.

ESA_LAB@ is a cooperation scheme which was initiated in 2017 to establish strong institutional ties between the ESA, academia, industry and other entities.

It was designed to help define new technical and business approaches that can be applied to the rapidly evolving space sector. It is also used to attract and educate young and talented people, encouraging them to get involved in space activities, taking into account how the space ‘angle’ can provide disruptive and future-orientated solutions.

The ESA_Lab@UCLan, managed by Gianluigi Baldesi, Senior Corporate Development Coordinator at ESA, will jointly investigate how ‘public value’ can be understood and how it can be made a useful tool to explain the effects ESA has on member states and society as a whole.

ESA’s Chief Strategy Officer Kai-Uwe Schrogl presented the agreement, signed by the ESA Director General Jan Worner and UCLan’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) Lynne Livesey, to Rick Wylie, the Samuel Lindow Academic Director and Executive Director of the Applied Policy Science Unit at UCLan.

"we are delighted that our work at our Westlakes Campus in collaboration with the Samuel Lindow Foundation has led to this international initiative"

Dr Livesey said: “A unique programme of work in public value management at Westlakes Campus, within our Lancashire School of Business and Enterprise and under the auspices of UCLan’s Applied Policy Science Unit (APSU) has led to the creation of ESA_LAB@UCLan. 

“This work is leading to the development of an innovative framework for ESA to manage and maximise its public value policy and profile and this work will be featured as a case study within a major book scheduled for early 2020 on public value with Rowman and Littlefield International.

“Professor Schrogl and I are members of the advisory board of APSU and we are delighted that our work at our Westlakes Campus in collaboration with the Samuel Lindow Foundation has led to this international initiative.

“With the establishment of ESA_LAB@UCLan we are now looking to extend this collaboration more widely in business and management and more broadly across other schools, centres and campuses.”