Why contracts often reproduce hierarchy rather than protect lived experienced collaborators. We look at co-researcher contracts, university assumptions of “vulnerability” around mental health and lived experience, IP clauses, liability, and when refusing a contract is the ethical choice.
This session explores the opportunities and challenges of conducting research with LGBTQ+ people with lived experience of dementia, an underserved population both in research and service provision. The session draws on a co-design project in which an academic team, experts-by-experience, and a visual artist collaborated as equal to produce research outputs. The underlying ethos was based on the principle of ‘to each their own (expertise)’, principles for good practice.
Iona Pickett will share results from her PhD project, which aimed to explore perceptions of the relationship between identity and mental health, and understand how this varied within and between intersectional social identities. She will discuss the background and methodological justification for the project, reflect on the research process, and consider how these results relate to our understanding of mental health inequalities.
Open for booking: 10-14 August 2026.
The course will give an overview and introduction to qualitative research methods, including individual interviews, focus group discussions, observation, ethical issues, thematic analysis, and rigour in qualitative research.
Universities increasingly emphasise research impact, yet the ethical dimensions of partnership work are often left underexplored. Working with communities, groups, organisations, and institutions brings not only opportunities, but also responsibilities that shape how relationships are built, maintained, and sustained. This interactive workshop offers a space to reflect on the ethical questions that arise in impact work.
Drawing on Dr Amna Zaqout’s research with children, this session uses children’s drawings as an example to demonstrate how visual expression can offer insight into children’s inner worlds, particularly in relation to self-concept and emotional experience.
In recent years, clinical prediction models (CPMs) have emerged as an avenue for risk stratification and the provision of highly individualised care, through careful consideration of differences across individuals’ characteristics, genes, environments, and lifestyles. In psychiatry, whilst many CPMs have shown promise in improving care, few have actualised their potential and been implemented for routine usage in clinical practice as in certain branches of medicine (e.g., cardiovascular disease and cancer).
