Challenge-Led Research Practices

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. This book examines the increasing importance of engagement with non-academic groups and actors in the co-production of knowledge and real-world influence in academic research.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Reports on the innovative, transdisciplinary co-production on sustainable urbanisation undertaken by Mistra Urban Futures, a highly influential research centre based in Sweden (2010-19), this book makes a significant contribution to evolving theory about comparative urban research.

Who are universities for? argues for a large-scale shake up of how we organise higher education. It includes radical proposals for reform of the curriculum and how we admit students to higher education. Offering concrete solutions, it provides a way forward for universities to become more responsive to challenges.

Student fees have saddled graduates with enormous debt, satisfaction rates are low, a high proportion of graduates are in non-graduate jobs, and public debt from unpaid loans is rocketing. This timely and challenging analysis gives robust new policy proposals to encourage excellence and ultimately benefit society.

How can we re-establish universities’ social purpose? The solution lies with asking not only ‘what are we good at?’, but also ‘what are we good for?’. Chris Brink shows how universities can – and should - promote positive social change.

Discussing the political understandings of trust and mistrust in the context of data, AI and technology at large, this book defines a process of trustification used by governments, corporations, researchers and the media to legitimise exploitation and the increasing of inequalities.

This book highlights embodiment as a qualitative research tool and outlines what it means to do embodied research in research. It shows how using this non-invasive approach with vulnerable research participants can help service users or research participants to be involved in the co- production of services and in participatory research.

This book offers both a road map and a vision of what being a scholar can be when reimagined in the digital era to enliven the public good. It discusses digital innovations in higher education as well as reflecting upon what these mean in an age of austerity.

This unique, holistic and radical perspective on participatory practice has been updated to reflect on advances made in the past decade and the impact of austerity. The innovative text bridges the divide between community development ideas and practice and considers how to bring about transformative social change.

Research Ethics in the Real World highlights the links between research ethics and individual, social, professional, institutional, and political ethics. Helen Kara considers all stages of the research process and provides guidance for quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods researchers about how to act ethically throughout.

Social Policy First Hand is the first comprehensive international social policy text from a participatory perspective and presents a new service user-led social policy that addresses the current challenges in welfare provision.

This unique book is the first to critique the past, present and future welfare state from a participatory perspective. Peter Beresford demonstrate the value of ‘user knowledge’ by challenging orthodox social policy and the limitations of both Fabian and Neo-liberal perspectives drawing on service users ‘ own ideas and experience.