Engineering Exchange: the democratic imperative for researchers to engage with local communities.

Engineering knowledge is more important than ever, but it needs to be responsive and accessible to a wider range of democratic actors if it is to solve societies’ most challenging problems. Typically framed by the interests of large institutional and industrial actors, engineering research has been much less successful in directly engaging with local communities. Sarah Bell outlines the core purpose of the Engineering Exchange (EngEx), recently established at UCL to expand the impact of engineering research and redress the balance for democracy in technological societies.