Building Future Communities Research Centre
Nothing About Us Without Us
LSBU has been ranked third in the world for reducing inequalities in the Times Higher Impact Rankings 2024. As a contributing factor, the Building Future Communities (BFC) Research Centre is a creative umbrella designed to add value to various inclusive participatory research projects prioritizing this agenda through stakeholder engagement and collaboration.
Our ethos is inclusive, and we work collectively focusing an intersectional lens on social justice concerns and research for transformation and real-world impact. We engage with funded research, enterprise activity, consultancy and researcher development with organisations including charities, organisations, community groups and local authorities.
Based on the principle ‘nothing about us without us,’ BFC builds on the creative participatory work of the former Social Justice and Global Responsibility Research Centre.
We're committed to researcher development and in particular to encouraging researchers who do not have easy access to research support including for example young, disabled, minoritised, digitally/linguistically excluded people, and colleagues who work in further education or professional services roles.
BFC colleagues are social scientists accustomed to working on interdisciplinary projects.
LSBU Researchers (in alphabetical order)
Below is a dynamic list of LSBU researchers working on relevant projects. We also partner with external collaborators and work with a growing community of early career researchers and postgraduate research students. The list will be updated regularly.
Professor Caitríona Beaumont
Research Interests: history of female activism, female networks and women’s social movements in Ireland and Britain across the nineteenth and twentieth century.
Dr Nicole Brown
Research interests: representations of experiences, the generation of knowledge, and research methods and approaches to explore these ideas.
Dr Jessie Bustillos
Research interests: youth identities and post-school transitions, intersections of inequalities in education.
Professor Eddie Chaplin
Research interests: people with intellectual disability, autism and ADHD in the Criminal Justice System, mental health training and peer mentoring via coproduction with people with intellectual disability and autism.
Danny Clegg
Research interests: Universal design for learning, disabled student and staff experience. Convenor of LSBU Disabled Staff Network.
Dr Charlotte Clements
Research Interests: informal education, inclusive education, history and policy of welfare and education, professional identities of youth workers.
Dr Clara Eroukhmanoff
Research interests: gender and foreign policy, feminist foreign policy, the politics of the war on terrorism.
Catherine Evans
Research interests: law in a social and community activism context focussing on the Windrush scandal, transitional justice, and the Columbian peace accord.
Dr Cameron Giles
Research interests: law in a social and historic context, law, and digital technology, often focusing on offences connected to sex and sexuality.
Dr Charalampia Karagianni
Research interests: teacher education, inclusive education in the further education and skills sector, intercultural education, gender studies.
Professor Alex Kendall
Research interests: learning identities and lived experiences of learning (in and out of formal settings), practitioner education (UK and internationally), cultures of sanctuary, creative, participatory and arts-based methodologies and pedagogies.
Joanna Krupa
Research interests: education, neurodiversity, parent-school partnerships.
Dr Karla Lopez
Research Interests: student outcomes, experiences and student voice related to widening participation and intersections with gender, race, identities, and migration; ethical practices; international student mobility.
Professor Nicola Martin
Research interests: inclusive education and critical disability studies.
Andy Owusu
Research interests: Black student mental health.
Pippa Palmer
Research interests: Systems change, sector building, programme design, knowledge exchange, participatory research and co-creation: housing, retrofit, net zero transitions, institutional challenges, boarding school survivors.
Dr Preethi Premkumar
Research interests: family relationships, mental health, social exclusion, virtual-reality psychosocial intervention, disability and race, career progress of minoritised researchers.
Dr Alex Prior
Research interests: Political engagement and democratic participation; Parliaments and political institutions; and Narratives, storytelling, and deliberation.
Dr Federica Rossi
Research interests: criminalisation of activism and dissent, imprisonment and penal policies, politically motivated crimes, state harm and violence.
Dr Martha Shaw
Research interests: religion and worldviews in education and education for intercultural citizenship.
Dr Rory Summerley
Research interests: Accessibility for interactive technology and entertainment.
Dr Allan Tyler
Research interests: LGBTQ+ mental health, LGBTQ+ youth and safeguarding, mental health, sex work, homelessness, nicotine harm reduction, e-cigarettes, smoking cessation.
We work closely with LSBU’s Doctoral Academy and actively support researcher development
The centre is currently working on projects around access to healthcare, community, culture, social care, education, and employment. We seek to engage in creative ways to enable real participation, particularly of the seldom heard voices of citizens who may experience marginalisation. We prioritise inclusive researcher development, peer support, and seek to build informal, inclusive, and supportive networks which meet regularly to share ideas and progress research and enterprise projects which fit with BFC’s ethos.
Recent research grants and enterprise awards
| Research | Funder |
|---|---|
| Brown, N., Martin, N. & Premkumar, P. (2024). "Not as simple as right or wrong": A themed report on social care and support for disabled people in the UK. Report for the Disability Unit, Equality Hub, Cabinet’s Office. | Cabinet Office |
| Tender to edit a book for the NADP based on the Disabled Student Commitment. | National Association of Disability Practitioners |
| Research on the impact of the COVID pandemic on the career progression of researchers with Equality Act protected characteristics. | UKRI |
| Rees-Roberts, D., Premkumar, P. (2024). Depict VR - A virtual reality intervention to help young people who hear voices. | Innovate UK |
| Premkumar, P., Rees-Roberts, D. (2024). Depict VR: a multi-sensory multi-user proof-of-concept VR application to address voice-hearing in young people | British Academy |
| Progression to residential care of older autistic adults. | NHS England |
| Identifying, understanding, and improving practical and social support and wellbeing for autistic adults with intellectual impairment over the age of 45 years and their family carers. | John and Lorna Wing Foundation |
| Universal Healthcare, a national inquiry setting out our investigation into how the NHS can address the challenges of Universal Healthcare by how it designs and provides services based on health needs. | NHS Sussex and NHS West Yorkshire |
| Chown, N. et al (2023). General Practitioner Autism Training and Mandatory Medical Training: A Cross-Sectional Study of GPs’ Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices. Canadian Journal of Educational and Social Studies. 3 (1), pp. 1-16 | NHS England |
| Premkumar, P., Takhar, S., Martin, N. (2023). Disability, Loneliness and Relationships: A thematic report on relationships with family and friends among disabled people in the UK | Cabinet Office Disability Unit |
| Doherty et al (2024) (Doctoral Student): An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis of the Experiences of Autistic Psychiatrists: “If We Can't Recognize Ourselves, How Can We Diagnose Autistic Patients Accurately?” INSAR Conference Poster. | |
| The Black Students Mental Health Project collaborated closely with Black students to gain insight into their perspectives on education, health, and overall well-being, including the challenges they faced in accessing support. | Office for Students and London South Bank University |
| Understanding the Interplay: Education, lived worldviews & citizenship. This project works with Secondary schools in England to explore young people’s conception of citizenship and the relationships between identity, belonging and religion/worldview. | Culham St Gabriel’s Trust |
| Agency and Advocacy: Locating Women's Grassroots Activism in England and Ireland, 1918 to the present (AH/X008606/1). | AHRC |
Groups which work closely with the BFC Research Centre include:
BFC has established relationships with funders (including The Cabinet Office, British Academy and NHS England) and organisations (including local authorities, charities, SME’s, employers, and citizen groups).
Working equitably with interdisciplinary collaborators we add value to research, enterprise and researcher development initiatives and have very close links across LSBU and with relevant organisations including The Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities, Theatre in Prison and Probation, The Claudia Jones Organisation, The Southwark Day Centre for Asylum Seekers, London Youth, Partnership for Young London, Diversity and Ability, The Windrush Clinic, Jigsaw House, The National Association of Disability Practitioners, The National Association of Disabled Staff Networks, The Westminster Autism Commission, The Participatory Autism Research Collective, Autism Voice, Autistic Doctors International, London Higher and LSBU’s Peoples Academy and Doctoral College.
We work closely with LSBU’s Doctoral College. Students associated with BFC are supported in qualitative research which considers for example aspects of student experience across the age range from early years into adulthood, universal design, mental health concerns, neurodivergence, parenting and criminal justice, community education, inclusive pedagogies.
BFC collaborates with LSBU’s Legal and Social Policy Clinic, where undergraduate students gain real-world experience researching and responding to policy consultations. The Legal and Social Policy Clinic builds upon LSBU’s success supporting the local community through its student-run Legal Advice Centre.