Research

 

You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.

Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
 

Books: Research

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Urban Ageing and Spatial Justice

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

How can we design, develop and adapt urban environments to better meet the needs and aspirations of an increasingly diverse ageing population? 

This edited collection offers a new approach to understanding the opportunities and challenges of creating ‘age-friendly’ communities in the context of urban change. Drawing together insights from leading voices across a range of disciplines, the book emphasises the urgent need to address inequalities that shape the experience of ageing in urban environments.

The book combines a focus on social justice, equity, diversity, and co-production to enhance urban life. Exploring a range of age-friendly community projects, contributors demonstrate that, despite structural obstacles, meaningful social change is achievable at a local level.

Open access
Author:

Over the past decades, ‘photovoice’ has emerged as a participatory and creative research method in which participants capture and discuss their reality through photographs.

This indispensable ‘how-to’ book with exercises and visual aids takes novice and veteran researchers through the practicalities and ethics of applying this approach. Written by experienced teacher Nicole Brown, the book:

• outlines the conceptual foundations and historical development of the approach;

• redefines photovoice as a research method and as a framework;

• explores how photovoice can be used in all stages of research from data collection to dissemination;

• provides guidance and food for thought to get researchers started on their project.

Each chapter ends with exercises that focus readers• learning and understanding by practically engaging them in the work presented throughout. The examples and visual aids will help them recognise all the details presented and represented in a photograph.

For researchers who would like to try their hand at photovoice as a method or as a framework to foster a more participatory approach, this is the ultimate guide to kickstart their project.

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This book firmly positions lived experience-led expertise as a unique and compelling form of knowledge in decolonising and disrupting research, teaching and advocacy.

Based on the insights of people with first-hand experiences, each chapter presents unique accounts and reflections on a diverse range of social justice issues. Together, the authors’ perspectives centre lived experiences in the production of knowledge, challenge outsider-imposed views, and create new research and writing norms. They demonstrate that when lived experience experts lead the way, their knowledge of how to address social injustices can enrich, transform and decolonise research, teaching and advocacy.

This collection is an invaluable resource for academic and community-based researchers, practitioners, advocates, educators, policymakers, students and people whose lived experiences and views continue to be marginalised across diverse settings.

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Advancing Methodologies for Social Change

Can our research create conditions for people to flourish? What kinds of questions do we ask about the social world and how knowledge is produced? Does our approach to research itself matter?

This edited collection explores and illustrates the nature of research for social justice. Drawing on a diverse range of social research projects, it examines research with and for young people, marginalised communities and those who work to further social justice and human rights goals.

Providing key examples of the tools, processes and outcomes of research relevant to social justice, including where and how these frameworks can be used in the design and execution of research, this is a much-needed intervention to social research methodology.

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Violence, Development and Dialogue in Colombia

What role does dialogue play in peacebuilding? How can community-based activities contribute to broader peace processes? What can participatory research methods add to local efforts to build peace?

In this book the authors examine these questions through their work with two different Colombian communities who have pursued dialogue amidst ongoing violence, environmental injustice and socio-economic challenges. By reflecting on what people in these contrasting places have achieved through participatory peacebuilding, the authors explore different forms of local agency, the prospects for non-extractive academic engagement, and practical and theoretical lessons for participating in peace in other conflict-affected settings.

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Whose Reality Counts?
Editors: and

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

Examining countries where religious pluralism is in decline, including Iraq, India, Pakistan and Nigeria, this book brings together reflections, knowledge and learning about the daily experiences of religious minorities, generated using participatory research methods. It also showcases the participatory methodologies implemented by its international team of contributors and highlights the importance of using non-extractive methods for engaging with participants.

Including a careful consideration of the ethics and limitations of participatory research with persecuted groups, the book reflects on the implications for people’s agency when research creates space for them to reflect on their realities in a group setting and uses methods which put their own experience and analysis at the centre of the process.

Open access
Authors: and

Avoiding both over-simplification and jargon-riddled complexity, this book is an invaluable, straightforward guide to participatory research for you and your fellow practitioners working with community groups and organisations.

The book offers a blueprint for your research project, taking you through each stage of the process, from planning your project to disseminating your findings. Keeping in mind imperatives such as engagement, involvement and voice, the book explores how best to conduct your research in ways which are meaningful for the participants.

The book includes valuable resources such as reflection points, chapter summaries and further reading lists. It will encourage and empower practitioners to plan and execute participatory research projects with confidence.

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The Poetics of Letting Go

This book invites the reader to think about collaborative research differently. Using the concepts of ‘letting go’ (the recognition that research is always in a state of becoming) and ‘poetics’ (using an approach that might interrupt and remake the conventions of research), it envisions collaborative research as a space where relationships are forged with the use of arts-based and multimodal ways of seeing, inquiring, and representing ideas.

The book’s chapters are interwoven with ‘Interludes’ which provide alternative forms to think with and another vantage point from which to regard phenomena, pose a question, and seek insights or openings for further inquiry, rather than answers. Altogether, the book celebrates collaboration in complex, exploratory, literary and artistic ways within university and community research.

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Volume 2: Co-production Methods and Working Together at a Distance

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Groups most severely affected by COVID-19 have tended to be those marginalised before the pandemic and are now being largely ignored in developing responses to it.

This two-volume set of Rapid Responses explores the urgent need to put co-production and participatory approaches at the heart of responses to the pandemic and demonstrates how policymakers, health and social care practitioners, patients, service users, carers and public contributors can make this happen.

The second volume focuses on methods and means of co-producing during a pandemic. It explores a variety of case studies from across the global North and South and addresses the practical considerations of co-producing knowledge both now - at a distance - and in the future when the pandemic is over.

Open access
Volume 1: The Challenges and Necessity of Co-production

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Groups most severely affected by COVID-19 have tended to be those marginalised before the pandemic and are now largely being ignored in developing responses to it.

This two-volume set of Rapid Responses explores the urgent need to put co-production and participatory approaches at the heart of responses to the pandemic and demonstrates how policymakers, health and social care practitioners, patients, service users, carers and public contributors can make this happen.

The first volume investigates how, at the outset of the pandemic, the limits of existing structures severely undermined the potential of co-production. It also gives voice to a diversity of marginalised communities to illustrate how they have been affected and to demonstrate why co-produced responses are so important both now during this pandemic and in the future.

Open access