A presentation I gave at the School of Public Health Education Day conference at Imperial College London on 15th June 2023. I proposed a collaborative inter-disciplinary initiative (GPS-HE) to reflexively examine the positionality of Imperial College as a powerful STEMM- and biomedical-focussed institution with explicitly global ambitions. Drawing from ethnographic principles and methods we should seek to understand the sociocultural and economic impacts of our global engagements – including the intended, unintended and the unimagined – from the perspectives and lived experiences of those potentially (and actually) affected. A set of ethnographic skills, grounded in core anthropological theoretical frameworks, should be integrated into policy-making and into our educational provision to equip graduates with the tools to critically and qualitatively examine the nature and extent of the local, regional and global impacts of change-making or problem-solving endeavours.