Co-producing research

Sarah Banks is Professor in the School of Applied Social Sciences and Co-director, Centre for Social Justice and Community Action, Durham University, UK. She teaches and researches in the fields of community development, professional ethics and participatory action research. She was Coordinator of Imagine North East.

Angie Hart is Professor of Child, Family and Community Health and Director of the Centre of Resilience for Social Justice, University of Brighton. She teaches professional health and social care courses and undertakes participatory research into resilience and inequalities. Angie directs a community interest company, Boingboing, supporting children, families and practitioners (www.boingboing.org.uk).

Kate Pahl is Professor of Arts and Literacy at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.

Professor of Public History and Community Heritage and Head of the Department of English, History and Creative Writing, Edge Hill University

Clare Levi works with older people at the Search project based in Benwell, Newcastle, UK. She coordinated the ‘Growing old in West Newcastle’ project for Imagine North East.

Ben Kyneswood is Lecturer in Sociology at Coventry University. His work involves using community photographic archives to challenge dominant narratives and established thinking. His company Photo Archive Miners recently published the photography book of Masterji and exhibits worldwide.

University of Huddersfield

Beverly Wenger-Trayner is a learning consultant specializing in communities of practice and social learning systems. Her expertise encompasses both the design of learning architectures and the facilitation of processes, activities, and use of new technologies. She has also been the creative director of an Open Source platform for networked communities.

Suna Eryigit-Madzwamuse is Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Director of the Centre of Resilience for Social Justice, University of Brighton. Her work focuses on promoting wellbeing and resilience of children, young people and their families, taking into account biological and contextual risk and protective factors from a developmental perspective. She also volunteers for the social enterprise, Boingboing.

Mandeep Samra is an oral historian, artist and heritage activist, part of Let’s Go Yorkshire. She led Sound System Culture and Let’s Play Vinyl, both funded by Arts Council England. She is author of Sound System Culture: Celebrating Huddersfield’s Sound Systems (One Love, 2014).

Elizabeth Pente was awarded her PhD from the University of Huddersfield in 2018. Her research is concerned with public history and post-Second World War urban decline and regeneration. She is co-editor of Re-Imagining Contested Communities (Policy, 2017).

Natalie Pinnock-Hamilton MBE is a Huddersfield-based community activist, who has been involved in numerous community development projects. She is a leading force in Building African Caribbean Communities and Reach Performing Arts.

Onyeka Nubia an historian, writer and law lecturer who promotes the study of early modern histories to contextualise Black and World history. He has a PhD from the University of East Anglia and has published a number of books including Blackamoores: Africans in Tudor England, Their Presence, Status and Origins (Narrative Eye, 2013).

Milton Brown is chief executive of Kirklees Local TV, which documents stories in Huddersfield and Dewsbury and surrounding areas. He is taking a PhD at the University of Huddersfield, on the experience of African-Caribbean people in navigating identity in post-war Britain.

Shabina Aslam is a theatre maker and has been a creative producer and radio drama producer. She is undertaking a PhD at the University of Huddersfield on ‘bussing out’ – the 1960s and 1970s policy of the educational dispersal of black and Asian children.

Elizabeth Chapman Hoult is a lecturer in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, where she directs the MSc in Education, Power and Social Change. She uses literary theory and literary analysis to deepen understandings of individual and community resilience, hope and imagined futures.

Louise Ritchie works at the Department for Lifelong learning at the University of Sheffield and has extensive experience as a researcher on community research projects.

Prue Chiles is a Professor of Architecture at the University of Newcastle.

Elias Kourkoutas is Professor of Psychology and Special Education, University of Crete. His research explores ways to develop meaningful resilience-based inclusive practices that help teachers, parents, and students with special educational needs, social emotional and academic difficulties, and those at risk for school exclusion, overcome difficulties and be successfully included.

Lisa Buttery is an Artist in Residence and trainer with Boingboing where she designs illustrations and artwork, and co-produces books, films, exhibitions and conference presentations around visual arts, mental health and resilience. Her artwork is an important way of coping with mental health issues and raising awareness of mental health issues in young people.

Etienne Wenger-Trayner is a globally recognized thought leader in the field of social learning and communities of practice. He writes books and articles for practitioners in organisations who want to base their knowledge strategy on communities of practice. His work is influencing a growing number of organizations in the private and public sectors.

Josh Cameron is Principal Occupational Therapy Lecturer, University of Brighton. His interests include collaborative approaches to adult resilience, including the return-to-work experiences of workers with mental health problems, and combining the expertise and knowledge of people with lived experience, practitioners and academics for research and practice development. He also volunteers for the social enterprise Boingboing.

Andrew Church is Professor of Human Geography and Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Research and Enterprise, University of Brighton. His highly interdisciplinary and collaborative work focuses on human-nature relations and interactions to better understand how to manage change into the future.

Susanne Martikke leads on research at Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisation (GMCVO), the voluntary sector support organisation for the city-region of Greater Manchester. She has more than twelve years’ experience of conducting research with and about the voluntary sector. Some of this research has been in partnership with academics at local and national universities. She is now working on a collaborative Studentship in Sociology at the University of Manchester.

Ruth Taylor works for Pendower Good Neighbour Project, based in Benwell, Newcastle, UK. She coordinated the ‘Time traveller’ project with young people for Imagine North East.

Luke Johnston is a detached youth worker with Phoenix Detached Youth Project in North Shields, UK. His main areas of work are detached work, developing street spaces, working with young men’s issues and education around social media safety. He coordinated an intergenerational graffiti art project for Imagine North East.

Patrick Harman is Executive Director of the Hayden-Harman Foundation, which focuses on community development efforts in High Point, North Carolina, US. He also teaches courses on the non-profit sector at Elon University, US. He provided assistance to Imagine North East during his Fulbright fellowship.

Yvonne Hall was formerly a community researcher at the Cedarwood Trust, Meadow Well Estate, North Shields, where she coordinated the ‘Imagining Community at Cedarwood’ project for Imagine North East. She is now studying for a degree in Psychology with History.

Anne Bonner is the Chief Executive of Riverside Community Health Project in Benwell, Newcastle. She works alongside a committed team addressing the effects of inequalities on the lives of people who live in the west end of Newcastle. Riverside undertook a project on ‘playing with change and ideas’ for Imagine North East.

Andrea Armstrong is a researcher at Durham University, UK, currently working on the dynamics of trust in physical places/digital spaces. She was Research Associate for Imagine North East.