Monday November 3rd 2025
The Roslin Institute, Midlothian
Written by Midlothian View Reporter, Liam Eunson
A world-leading institute for animal science research in Midlothian put their efforts towards public engagement, providing educational materials and workshops to local schools.
Located within the University of Edinburgh’s Easter Bush Campus, the Roslin Institute has been leading animal research for decades an id now part of the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies.
Made famous by their work with Dolly the Sheep, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, the institute, alongside the larger Easter Bush Campus and the Easter Bush Science Outreach Centre (EBSOC), also put their efforts towards public engagement, including state-of-the-art workshops and materials for schools to ‘raise awareness of science for the next generation’.
Running courses and workshops for primary and secondary school children during term time and in the school holidays, EBSOC was designed to develop new relationships and raise public awareness about animal science by offering hands-on science workshops for local, national and international schools and community groups.
Dr Nicola Stock, Public Engagement with Research Manager, explained:
“The Easter Bush Science Outreach Centre provides hands-on science experiences to school pupils and community groups, and it helps us to bring the public closer to the animal science being conducted here at the Easter Bush Campus.
“Schools and young people are a big focus of our public engagement. It’s really important to us that we are inspiring the next generation of scientists. Also, we focus on raising aspirations around science, because I think a lot of people don’t really understand what scientists do and maybe think it’s not something for them.
“There’s quite a bit of evidence that if you go out and you introduce young people to scientists, they realise they are just people like them, then you can start to break down barriers to those young people studying and working in science. Hopefully our engagement programme will inspire a greater range of people who could have a really great career in science.”
Having a state-of-the-art lab in their Charnock Bradley Building exclusively for outreach is proving popular for both school students in Midlothian and across the region with Nicola explaining that their free October school holiday workshops this year were so popular that they will be offering more sessions in the February break to meet demand.
Nicola explained:
“As well as our holiday workshops for 16-18 year, we also run a term-time programme of curriculum-linked animal science workshops for local schools. We are running workshops for high school pupils studying Higher and Advanced Higher biology till the end of the year, then after Christmas we are switching ti our primary school programme, with science workshops for local P6 and P7 classes.”
The EBSOC programme also includes hands-on animal science workshops for college students and resources for teachers to support learning in classrooms and teacher development.
“One of the things that we really focus on here, which is a bit different to some other university outreach, is that all the activities that we do are directly linked to research and all of the workshops are supported by our scientists”, Nicola explained.
“My team leads the workshops from the front, taking on the teacher role, but out scientists are at the tabes with the pupils, supporting them to get hands-on with our real lab equipment and talking to them about studying and working in science.”
As well as being part of University of Edinburgh, the Roslin Institute and the wider Easter Bush Campus is an important facility in Midlothian, leading scientific research alongside inspiring local schools through their valuable educational outreach.
Hannah Simpson, Head of Marketing and Communications, explained the significance of the institute being in Midlothian:
“I think the location that we have here is great, and we are near to a lot of other scientific centres in the area, making this part of Midlothian one of the largest concentrations of animal science in Europe. When you are in the city, you are very limited by the footprint of the site, but out Easter Bush site has room for future development.”
Before calling Midlothian their home, the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies was in various locations in Edinburgh, such as Summerhall, but the school needed to expand.
Hannah explained:
“We have a purpose-built postmortem facility here and I remember being told when I started that when the postmortem rooms were being designed, one of the things they asked for was for the doors to be big enough to bring a giraffe through. This is something that wasn’t possible in Summerhall.”
For more information on the Roslin Institute’s public engagement programme at the Easter Bush Science Outreach Centre visit www.ebsoc.ed.ac.uk.
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