Example industries:
Health, education, local government, HR, user experience, community services
Why partner with us?
EVIDENCE-BASED INSIGHTS
Access rigorous psychological research applied directly to your organisational, community, or customer challenges.
LOW-RISK, HIGH-VALUE
Projects are supervised by experienced UC academics and embedded within formal coursework or co-funded research frameworks.
TALENT PIPELINE
Engage with capable students and researchers who already understand your organisation and sector.
FLEXIBLE PARTNERSHIP MODELS
From short student projects to co-funded Master’s and PhD research.
Ways to partner
Applied Psychology Research Projects (10–12 weeks)
PSYC377 Psychology in Action - Bridging Theory and Practice
- Small teams of senior undergraduate students
- Supervised by UC psychology staff
- Data collected and analysed for your organisation
- Ideal for pilot studies, evaluations, problem exploration
- Pathway to outcome you can implement
Propose a project for undergraduate researchers
Advanced Psychology Research Partnerships (20-22 weeks)
PSYC680 – Industry-Engaged Group Research Project
- Small teams of high-performing postgraduate students
- Deeper analysis
- Longer engagement
- Often exploratory work leading to implementation or funding bids
Discuss an advanced student research project
Psychology in Action Research Collaboratory (Future-focused)
Master’s or PhD research solving complex, high-impact issues.
- Co-design of research questions
- Opportunities for co-funded research
- Shared supervision (academic + industry)
- Longer-term strategic value
- Outcome you can implement
- Option for confidentiality / IP agreements
Expression of interest: Psychology Research Collaboratory
What makes a good project?
A good project might be:
- Evaluating a programme or service
- Understanding behaviour change
- Improving engagement, wellbeing, safety, performance
- Testing ideas before scaling
- Understanding staff, customers, or communities
UC provides:
- Research design
- Student supervision
- Academic quality control
- Ethics guidance
We don't require:
- Pre-defined hypotheses
- Academic writing
- Existing data sets
How partnership works
- Initial conversation – You tell us your challenge
- Scoping – We shape it into a feasible project
- Matching – Students/researchers assigned
- Research phase – Data collection under UC supervision
- Outputs – Report, presentation, recommendations
Have a challenge you’d like explored? We’ll help you shape it into a research project.
Start a conversation
Academic Expertise
Carmen Weaver
Senior Lecturer in Work-Integrated Learning and Engaged Scholarship in Psychology
My research interests centre on the purposefully designed learning environments that are necessary to solve instructional problems. I am interested in designing environments to facilitate learner acquisition of knowledge and skills, incite affective or behavioural change, and promote learner motivation and engagement.
Don Hine
Professor
Don Hine is a professor of psychology at the University of Canterbury, specialising in environmental psychology. Don’s work focuses on understanding the factors that underlie environmental problems such as resource over-consumption, climate change, air pollution, and invasive species. His research group designs and evaluates behaviour change strategies to help solve these problems.
Don has authored over 100 peer reviewed publications, has extensive experience in curriculum development and teaching and has been involved in numerous community projects addressing air quality, biodiversity and the management of invasive animals.
Kumar Yogeeswaran
Professor
At the broadest level, my primary research lies in the realm of intergroup relations. This interest is fueled by the desire to understand how people’s membership in particular groups (e.g. ethnic, gender, or national groups) shape their attitudes, stereotypes, and behaviours toward others as well as their own self-conceptions.
Much of my primary work to date examines the complexities and challenges of achieving national unity in societies comprised of diverse cultural groups, while identifying new strategies that help reduce intergroup conflict in such nations.
As a secondary interest, I conduct research that bridges interdisciplinary fields by applying social psychological science to areas such as politics, social media communications, and robotics.
