New event on 4th December: Reimagining Research

In recent years, a number of initiatives have created opportunities for communities to initiate, design and lead research. With increasing impact, different models of community-led research are enabling communities to grow society’s understanding of inequalities and longstanding social challenges. As this movement gathers momentum, new support structures are helping to share this research with and beyond established academic research processes, growing our collective understanding of local and societal challenges and creating new visions for the future.

This sharing event will bring together some of the people forging these new paths together with an audience of community champions, activists, academics and policy makers to think together about how community research can grow, and how these new ways of working can create effective collaboration with more established models of research to build collective solutions to longstanding challenges.

The event will include provocations from those working in and with communities as well as opportunities for those attending to share their ideas. It is a collaboration between The British Science Association, the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) and The Young Foundation and will include:

• Projects from The Ideas Fund who are demonstrating co-creating and re-imagining new power relationships between community and academia

• Researchers in the Community Research Networks programme taking fresh approaches to understanding community challenges.

• The NCCPE will share insights arising from their Engaged Futures programme, a movement building programme to imagine visions for how universities engage with society in the future, and work together to realise them.

The event on 4 December 2025 will consist of an hour long (12.30-1.30) interactive workshop with guest speakers from the field of community research followed by an optional 30 minute facilitated networking opportunity. We hope people will be able to join for the full 90 minutes (until 2pm) but it is possible to come just for the first hour. We will compile a list of resources and sharing materials through the event and aim to build a mailing list of interested participants.

The organisers hope that the event will prompt new collaborations and ways of bringing together conversations around this theme. It aims not to be a one off sharing event but the first of a new set of collaborative encounters with people who share a vision for a more community-centred approach to researching our shared future.

Event speakers:

Dr Franklin Onukwugha is a Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Hertfordshire and a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Hull. His research addresses the root causes of health inequalities among Black and Minoritised Ethnic (BME) Communities with a focus on Adolescent and Young people's mental health and wellbeing. Franklin is the lead researcher on the Ideas Fund Norm Wellbeing Project that aims to Normalise Mental Health Conversation among the BME communities. Together with young people at Youth Aspire Connect, parents and community leaders they have co-produced an innovative family therapy, ‘The Chatterbox’, a creative and fun tool co-designed to normalise mental health conversation by strengthening the bond between parents and children through open, honest, and fun conversation.

Franklin serves on several Charity, Educational and Health Boards, including the Two Ridings Community Foundation and Thrive Co-operative Learning Trust. He is a member of the Hull City Council’s Health Inequalities Hub and passionate about empowering communities to solve their own problems and control their future.

Sally Bonnie leads Inspiring Futures Partnership CIC (Inspire Women Oldham), a community-led research organisation re-imagining research by transforming women from research subjects into "method creators," using creative approaches like podcasting, slow stitch, and zines to capture stories of transformation. With its roots in movement building and founded by Sally, Inspire shifts women "from labels to leaders" through collaborative research grounded in relationship, friendship, joy, and care—co-creating new spaces for participatory research with academic communities where community and academic researchers collaborate as partners, proving that wellbeing transformation and leadership development are valid research outcomes alongside traditional academic metrics.

You can find more information about Inspire here, and see a poster created about their work here.

Dr Stephen Crossley is an Assistant Professor at Durham University. Stephen has worked in the Sociology Department since 2020 and is the Deputy Director of Durham University’s Centre for Social Justice and Community Action (CSJCA), internationally recognised for research and ethics related to community-based participatory research.

Stephen has been shaping the structure and approach of the Rural Durham Community Research Network, including developing content and delivering all the training workshops. He believes community-led research deserves much greater recognition.

Sophie Duncan co-directs the National Co-ordination Centre for Public Engagement, which is working towards an inclusive higher education sector where communities can contribute to, and benefit from, knowledge, teaching, and research. Sophie co-edits Research for All, an open access, peer reviewed journal on the processes of engaged research – which encourages communities, researchers, academics, and others involved in engaged research to reflect on their engagement work.

Sophie has championed public engagement throughout her career, including at the Science Museum, Nesta, and the BBC. She has co-led programmes that have sought to establish partnerships between communities and university-based researchers, developing resources and approaches to enable partnerships to flourish. She is currently leading the Engaged Futures programme, a transformational change process which brings a range of participants together to imagine new futures for the higher education sector, and develop and enact an action plan for change.

Jay Conlon is a community researcher with a background in youth voice, advocacy and social action, beginning with their experience working with Durham County Council on local projects from 9 years old. Jay now uses the skills they've gained through those years of participation to support young people to deliver their own social action and community research project. They are currently working on a project with Jack Drum Arts, focusing on heritage and intergenerationality in the community arts of rural County Durham.