Our Partners in Participation

Meet our partners from across the University and discover more about their fantastic research. Find out how we work together to encourage best practice in participatory research at the University and beyond.

What is a Partner in Participation?

Our Partners in Participation ('PIPs') are drawn from across the University and allow us to directly support high quality participatory research while also collaborating to develop new resources and to the improve research culture for all of those undertaking involvement work. They represent networks, multi-year projects, hubs, and consortiums at the forefront of their respective fields.

We work with our partners to:

  1. Collaborate on active ongoing participatory research, contributing Library specialisms, resources and support.
  2. Develop new or adapt pre-existing resources and infrastructure to facilitate high quality participatory research.
  3. Work together on projects related to the improvement of participatory research culture.
  4. Coordinate and run activities, trainings, workshops, and events promoting best practice within participatory research.   

We have worked with each partner to identify up to three thematic priorities to focus our efforts.

Current Partners

The Binks Hub

The Binks Hub logo

Who are the Binks Hub?

The Binks Hub is a network of academics researchers, community members, practitioners and policy-makers using creativity and the arts to co-create research that makes a difference to people’s lives. As well as undertaking co-creative research with a range of partners, they provide a space where researchers, practitioners, policy makers and community groups can collaboratively discuss and share artistic and creative methods. 

 

Current Thematic Priorities

  • Community Archiving & Histories
  • Participatory Policy, Impact, and Research
  • Participant Awards, Education, & Credit 

 

Groundswell

Groundswell logo. It reads "Groundswell, Transforming our cities from the ground up"

Who are Groundswell?

GroundsWell is made up of a team of researchers, local community members and policymakers working together to create a collaborative cycle of positive action. They aim to identify and implement actions to maximise health and wellbeing benefits from urban green and blue spaces (UGBS) such as parks, community gardens, canals and rivers. From collecting data and conducting community research, to creating policies and supporting active citizenship, we are learning more about how UGBS impact economic, social, cultural, environmental and health systems. Our research and decision-making processes are democratic, ensuring that the voices of individuals and communities are heard. We believe in collaborating with community and policy stakeholders in all areas of our work, from research and design to implementation and evaluation of research findings.

 

Our partners are based in the Edinburgh are focussed on the community action package. Their work centres on integrating community groups and collaborators into the research process. This includes projects such as the "OurOutdoors" citizen science study:

 

 

Current Thematic Priorities

  • Recruitment for OurOutdoors Project and crowdsourcing projects.
  • Standardising Infrastructural Support for Activities
  • Community Reads and Community Oriented Research Outputs

 

Groundswell

Living Good Food Nation Lab Logo

Who are the Living Good Food Nation Lab?

In 2022 the Scottish Government passed the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Act, an innovative legislative framework designed to foster a healthier, fairer and more sustainable Scottish food system for all. The Living Good Food Nation Lab is a dynamic collaboration among academics, policymakers, and community advocates dedicated to investigating and supporting the rollout and implementation of the act.

 

Funded by the Wellcome Trust under their Advancing climate mitigation policy solutions with health co-benefits in G7 countries (Project No. 227154/Z/23/Z), our Living Good Food Nation Lab, composing a transdisciplinary consortia of academic, policy and civil society partners, will provide essential analytical support to relevant authorities in planning and developing their 1st Local Good Food Nation Plans, build connections, competencies, confidence and comfort in systems thinking within Scotland’s community of practice for food systems transformation, advise on the effective delivery of the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Act and showcase the opportunities for, value in, and need for, innovative metrics, ways of working and partnerships to deliver the ambitious vision of the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Act 2022.

Find out more information of the Good Food Nation Act

Discovering Livability

Discovering Liveability Logo

Discovering Liveability is an ambitious 7-year project that aims to disrupt the current focus on crisis interventions in suicide prevention. Instead of asking how we can prevent people dying, Discovering Liveability will explore how we might cultivate environments and societies that are more liveable. It will centre lived and living experiences of suicide and suicidality, working with researchers, activists and collaborators from across the world and exploring what lived/living experience really means in practice.  

 

While suicide research remains dominated by largely quantitative, psychological and medicalised approaches, Discovering Liveability will carve out alternative ways of ‘doing’ suicide research, centring collaborative exploration, development, and innovation in practices of liveability. Our approach will champion multiple qualitative methods to investigate alternatives to suicide prevention, including: ethnography, in-depth interviewing, critical policy analysis, arts-based, and other collaborative approaches.  

Becoming a Partner

Our partners are typically networks, hubs, consortiums, and large-scale research collaborations that are sustained and act as nodes of best practice at the University. We are keen to form equitable collaborations, where we can work together for tangible improvements for all researchers, participants, and communities involved in participatory practices.

If you would like to discuss potentially becoming a PiP, contact the Library's Participatory Research Engagement Officer to arrange a time for a discussion.

Contact us

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