Community Researchers

Researcher insights from beyond the university

Dr Jimmy Turner, Dr Christina McMellon, Dr Autumn Roesch-Marsh and Ellen Saffrey Stuart have been working on a review of the experiences of those outside universities involved in research projects in a ‘researcher’ context. The review identified these ‘community researchers’ from a range of different projects and allowed them to relate their experiences of the research and define what they felt was interesting about the process.

The review focused on the following specific areas:

  • How a community researcher is ‘made’, including aspects of the training, support and mentorship provided by university-based collaborators, and how they define themselves.
  • How community researchers approach, understand, and practice research differently than university-based researchers.
  • The ways in which academia can both support and be supported by community organisations in research.

Research methods comprised of collective interviews with participants, followed by a discussion to discern the extent to which university-based researcher views and experiences converge with and diverge from those of the community researchers.

As part of this review, two documents will be produced:

  • An accessible report to support existing and potential community researchers and their organisations.
  • A journal article for an audience of university-based researchers.

These outputs will be used to guide and shape future engagements with community researchers, initially for the Binks Hub team and then subsequently for other researchers and organisations, both community- and university-based.

Want to share your research via the Binks Hub?

If you've got an idea for a research project – or are already working on a research project – which you'd like to talk to the Binks Hub about, please just send us an email. We'd love to hear from you.