Amy Barnes
Senior Research Fellow
Profile
Biography
Amy is an academic lead specialising in embedded and participatory research on the wider determinants of health, climate action, and place-based policy.
Her work focuses on creating fairer, healthier, and climate-resilient places by bridging academic evidence, government decision-making, and community lived experience.
Amy serve's as Deputy Director of the Born in Bradford Centre for Social Change and Academic Lead for the Bradford Health Determinants Research Collaboration (HDRC) Evidence into Policy and Practice Hub. In these roles, Amy leads the Healthy Livelihoods embedded research team at the University of York, working alongside local authority partners and communities to help ensure public policy - from climate action to anti-poverty strategies - is evidence-informed and democratically co-produced.
Amy's approach embeds an understanding of health as the capability to realise aspirations, satisfy everyday needs, and cope with life’s challenge
Research Focus & Expertise
Amy's interdisciplinary research and knowledge mobilisation work is structured around four core pillars:
- Embedded policy infrastructure: Designing trust-based, embedded researcher models that bridge academia, local government, and regional policy systems.
- Creative community-based participatory research (CBPR): Developing democratic, accessible forms of research with communities, involving peer-researchers and creative tools like zine-making, participatory video, climate animations.
- Health equity & wider determinants: Synthesising evidence on structural drivers of health inequality, including child poverty, inclusive regeneration, supported housing, alcohol and drug harm prevention, and social-economy models like food co-operatives and credit unions.
- Just transition & healthy livelihoods: Ensuring place-based climate and nature strategies and regeneration actively prioritises health equity, local livelihoods, and community-led solutions.
Qualifications
- BSc (Hons)
- MA (Econ)
- PhD
- FHEA
Research
Overview
Amy has interdisciplinary public health experience, with particular expertise in the following areas:
- Inclusion, participation and partnership in public health policy and health
systems - Collective action to address wider determinants of health, including commercial
determinants, power and control, food, housing and creating healthy livelihoods and a healthier economy - Participatory research and evaluation
- Policy-engaged research
- Complex systems evaluation (social-political processes)
Projects
- Bradford HDRC Evidence into Policy and Practice Hub: Academic lead embedding research capacity into local government decision-making processes across wider determinants of health.
- Co-producing climate-nature action and literacy: Strategic lead for participatory research with community peer researchers and Council teams to inform local climate-nature strategies and action.
- Healthy urban places: Interdisciplinary collaboration and participatory research at scale, examining how urban environments shape community health and equity.
- Democratic economy & health: Investigating collective action models, including food co-operatives and credit unions, as structural vehicles for addressing inequality for health promotion.
Research group(s)
Collaborators
Amy works closely with local authorities, mayoral combined authorities, regional policy networks, and community organisations.
She welcomes conversations from potential research collaborators, policy partners, and prospective postgraduate students interested in:
- Embedded research and evidence-to-policy translation
- Community-based participatory research (CBPR) and creative methodologies
- Health equity, wider social/economic determinants, and place-based climate action