Born in Bradford Centre for Social Change at York announces funding for six new research projects
Posted on Monday 18 May 2026
Developed in collaboration with partners across Bradford, the projects build on BiB's unique datasets to generate evidence that can drive real policy change and improve health, wellbeing, and social outcomes.
Following a shortlisting process, six successful applicants have been named. These are:
Pete Dale – Beats and Belonging in Bradford: DJing for Youth Wellbeing and Inclusion
Building on promising pilot evidence that DJ programmes can enhance young people’s wellbeing, confidence and engagement, this project tests a scalable model for integrating DJing into mainstream school music in Bradford. The project will embed DJing workshops into three Bradford secondary schools to investigate impact on wellbeing, cultural identity and school engagement by combining quantitative wellbeing measures with qualitative interviews.
Kate Andersen – Childhood Matters: a co-produced exploration of how children's wellbeing is impacted by household social security receipt
This project has the overall objective of investigating the impacts of the UK social security system on children's wellbeing through a qualitative study co-produced with an ‘Experts as Evidence’ panel of parents who receive social security. By filling the gap in the evidence base, this project will help meet Bradford Council's objectives of understanding child poverty and how best to tackle it and will look to inform the Labour Government's strategy for reducing child poverty by the end of the current parliament.
James Myers – Investigating the social gradient of adolescent loneliness in the Born in Bradford Age of Wonder Cohort
This project will use the BiB Age of Wonder dataset to investigate why loneliness is more prevalent among socioeconomically disadvantaged adolescents, using advanced multilevel modelling. Patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) and co-production with young people from Bradford will be central throughout.
Evangelia (Lia) Chatzidiakou – Predicting indoor environmental health risks to support equitable retrofit policy in the UK
This project seeks to develop predictive models of indoor environmental health risks in Bradford homes which are undergoing energy efficiency retrofits, using sensor data from 300+ BiB homes. It will aim to assess how large-scale retrofits interact with changing climate conditions, particularly for vulnerable households.
Jennifer Sweetman & Amanda Perry – AGENSY: Assessing Gambling trends and Establishing a Network to Support Young people in Bradford
This is a two-phase project using BiB data to model gambling prevalence among young people, followed by community consultation workshops to map support provision and co-develop harm-reduction intervention recommendations. Phase one will explore the Born in Bradford (BiB) dataset to produce a series of regression models. Phase two will develop a network and explore the co-development of an intervention using community consultations.
Laura Fox & Edmund Coleman-Fountain (co-leads) – Co-designing and piloting an Inclusive Evidencing Framework to support research inclusivity across BiB and the wider Bradford community
This project will co-design and pilot an Inclusive Evidencing Framework ensuring learning-disabled young people with diverse communication modes shape research and policy. The research will draw from Bradford Council's Post-16 SEND Review as a real-world case study, adapting ADLib communication tools through co-production workshops.
The four individual researchers will receive £20,000 to work on projects over the next 12-18 months, while the co-lead project will receive £30,000 each over 12 months.
BiB Centre for Social Change at York director Professor Kate Pickett and Deputy Director, Dr Amy Barnes, said:
“We’re really excited to announce these six new BiB Centre for Social Change projects. Each project represents a bold and innovative approach to understanding and tackling some of the biggest challenges facing young people and communities, and builds on the essential work of the wider Born in Bradford programme.
“We look forward to working with Pete, Kate, James, Lia, Jennifer, Amanda, Laura and Edmund over the coming months.
“This announcement builds on the Centre's first cohort of five funded projects, which are making strong progress. Early findings on youth poverty and social security transitions have already been submitted to government and parliamentary calls for evidence, Co-production work on Bradford's climate transition has strongly influenced the Bradford Council Climate Action Plan, and research with young people on livelihoods and pathways to adulthood is already opening conversations with Born in Bradford about a larger scale piece of research in the field of youth transitions.
"A journal paper on racially minoritised girls' experiences of harassment, drawing on Born in Bradford cohort data, has been prepared and is ready for submission. Meanwhile, a project developing an AI assistant to support researchers in accessing and analysing BiB data is nearing completion, with a natural language interface already in development that will allow researchers to explore what data BiB holds, and understand its provenance.
“Together, the 11 projects reflect the Centre's growing momentum and its commitment to research that is rooted in Bradford and built for real world impact.”