Search Results

Research Digest: What can quantitative approaches learn from The Beatles?

Blog 22 August 2022

I’ve written before about the growing use of more rigorous quantitative approaches to community and third sector research. A great example is the way the School for Social Entrepreneurs used control cohorts to evaluate its pioneering Match Trading programme. By doing

Valuing and enabling citizen science: lessons from the Citizen Science Exploration Grant programme

Publication 14 August 2022

Exploring UKRI-funded projects, this report makes recommendations for future ‘citizen science’ research and funding design. 

Building meaningful relationships between researchers and society

Blog 9 August 2022

Our evaluation of UKRI-funded research projects seeks to better understand the value and scope of ‘citizen science’.

‘Sustainable and equitable’ engagement in research supported by new funding opportunity

News 20 July 2022

Project with UKRI brings £4m for Community Research Networks.

Research Digest: ‘Knowledge is NOT power’

Blog 30 June 2022

Over coffee last month with Professor Rebecca Madgin, Director of the AHRC’s Place-Based Research Programme, I was introduced to the concept of ‘felt experience’. I had been talking about the mysterious way that successful community businesses taking over pubs, shops, libraries

New research programme explores the role of ‘social infrastructure’ in levelling up

News 25 May 2022

A collaborative project, funded by the British Academy and Power to Change, and led by the Institute for Community Studies and the Bennett Institute for Public Policy.

Research Digest: Enough of the ‘grands projects’

Blog 24 May 2022

Hang around the ‘community development scene’ for more than a few years and you’ll probably develop a weary resignation about the endless cycling and recycling of well-meant policy interventions. I last saw this at the recent Local Trust levelling up conference

People shaping places, places shaping people: Community asset ownership

Blog 16 May 2022

Catch up on this roundtable that brought together policymakers, community business leaders, researchers and sector experts to explore how asset ownership encourages communities to become more effective stewards in their places.

Research digest: ‘Lessons in navigation’

Blog 29 March 2022

Nearly a quarter of a century after Google introduced the world to the joys of online searching (and the dangers of the filter bubble), user experience is all – and as we add ever more material to the Institute for

Research digest: ‘Variety is the spice of life’

Blog 25 February 2022

Good news! If you’re looking for a break from endless critiques of the government’s Levelling Up White Paper, you’ve come to the right place. This series of research digests is all about taking the longer view and making sense of

Exploring marginalisation with ‘compassion and empathy’

Blog 25 February 2022

In an ambitious project, undergraduate students from the faculties of Arts and Humanities and Social Science and Public Policy at Kings College London, were partnered with community researchers to identify issues of marginalisation or exclusion in their local areas. Funded by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, the

Levelling Up White Paper pledges ‘huge shift of power’ from Whitehall

News 3 February 2022

Our Associate Director welcomes “real weight given to wellbeing and pride in place”.