VV Funded Projects

Kelli Kennedy, Amy Barnes and Carolyn Snell

This project is looking to bring benefits to both the community and decision-making around achieving net zero in Bradford. This will be accomplished through creating a training program that will allow for the development of skillsets and experience for a cohort of researchers in co-production to work communities. These ‘community researchers’ will hold a series of workshops in areas as the least ‘ready’ for net zero and who will struggle to make the needed changes (e.g. due to low income/lack of funds or already experiencing fuel poverty). The project also will hold a follow up workshop with Bradford City Council to facilitate the inclusion of community voices in in the city’s Climate Action Plan. In so doing, this project will set forth insights into how to engage more deprived communities in net zero conversations and bring their voices to benefit city plans to reduce carbon emissions.

Saima Afaq and Kamran Siddiqi

Andrew Mott, Professor Catriona McDaid, Dr Jude Watson and Dr Suman Prinjha

The project will explore a range of stakeholders thoughts on how we better design randomised control trials (RCTs). The project will undertake qualitative interviews with participants discussing the problems they already face which result in changes. They will identify what changes already align with the Valuing Voices principles and barriers to aligning. Through identifying elements which are implemented they will understand which aren’t and design guidance and support to address those certain areas.

Dr. Karisha Kimone George

The project seeks to develop a policy document outlining best practice in relation to working equitably within the area of EDI. Not infrequently, staff and students who take on pioneering roles within the EDI arena in higher education come from minoritised backgrounds themselves. This adds a layer of complexity given the inevitable intermingling of their identities in this work. The proposed policy document will outline a framework for equitable treatment of minoritised individuals working within EDI - with a recognition of the role of staff and student’s own identities in this work. The document will be informed by a research project which involves interviewing minoritised staff and students who work within the EDI arena across as many HEIs as possible. Their lived experiences will then feed into the final policy document, ensuring that its recommendations for good practice and the necessary core protections that it outlines when engaging minoritised staff in EDI work, is founded on the lived realities of these individuals.

Emma Willingham, Emma Brown, Sue Edmunds, Jay Harrison, Damian Murphy, Dan Norman, Sophie Palmer, Joe Rees-Jones, and John Rose-Adams

The project will enable researchers acting as project leads (PIs) to develop their knowledge and skills; to develop and create more equitable research questions, teams and personnel. Contributing to a widening access culture, providing evidence of best practice to allow for the most equitable applications and awards.

The team will hold three training sessions that build foundations of equitable design for research and R&D projects in the immersive technology industry. Following the training sessions work will be completed to ascertain whether attendance has influenced participants working practices. A best practice framework will be provided as an open access research paper, a seminar in the XR Network+ online seminar series, and as part of the revised COSTAR grant delivery programme - embedding best practice.

 Dr Jo Rose, Dr Kelly Redeker and Prof. Kathryn Arnold

The project aims to shift farmers' perceptions of agricultural burning in Thailand and encourage the adoption of more sustainable alternatives. This involves using the Valuing Voices Tool to develop a monitoring framework to assess changes in attitudes for sustainable behaviour, particularly targeting younger people. The interdisciplinary team will then work with stakeholders, such as policymakers and farmers, to create an ethical code of conduct and explore alternatives to burning.

Pippa Cooper, Ruth Kelly, Piergiuseppe Parisi, and Harriet Gray

This project aims to create a framework that improves global equity and research processes at The University of York when working with Global South partners to support better collaboration. This change will be measured through collating case studies through interviews or focus groups with researchers who have previously worked with global south partners. The case studies will inform the development of an online toolkit which comprises of activities that will support researchers and central staff when working with global south partners. Furthermore, there will be training of central services staff to encourage a better understanding of the processes. There will be a large scale dissemination event at the end of the project to share the toolkit more broadly.

Andy Dougill, Eleanor Jew, and Gideon Baffoe

This project aims to evaluate and improve the resilience of urban food systems in Ghana by increasing awareness and providing practical tools to key stakeholders. To achieve this, the project will conduct workshops in several Ghanaian cities and produce a practical 'how-to' guide for use by city planners. This guide will demonstrate how researchers can better inform policymakers on improving urban food systems, empower stakeholders, and encourage local and national government to implement these changes. Additionally, the project will apply the Valuing Voices tool to evaluate a previous global research and capacity building partnership by conducting interviews with global collaborators.

Lindsey Gillson, Brennen Fagan, Jonathan Finch, Jonny Gordon, Pen Holland, Chris Lyon, Rob Marchant, Inês Martins, and Jon Pitchford

Landscapes are complex, existing in space, changing through time and shaped by geology, biology, and society. Exploring futures for landscapes requires knowing how the landscape came to be, what the landscape is, and what people want it to be. This means being inclusive and open-minded; people have different wants and needs. These range from responding to environmental change and producing food and recreation, to infrastructure, heritage, and sense of place. We use scenario planning to explore what people want the landscape to be while thinking about these different wants and needs, reflecting living in, with, and from nature. At York, researchers collaborate with partners to envision, scope, map, and model landscapes to help people explore landscape change, but this research is spread across York. Our project brings researchers and partners together with Valuing Voices to improve our methods and projects. We will:

Run a workshop to bring together methods and projects.
Support the launch of PhD projects starting in September 2025, involving site visits and partner engagement.
Write a paper on participatory research.

Our project works across York and York's partners to bring Valuing Voices and existing and new projects together, putting Valuing Voices into practice.

Mehreen Faisal, Hannah Maria Jennings, Faraz Siddiqui, and  Gerardo Zavala

FAIR Global Health Research
The Fostering Authorship Inclusion and Representation (FAIR) in Global Health Research (GHR) project focuses on fairness in academic authorship. The project aims to develop clear, inclusive standards to ensure everyone who contributes to GHR receives rightful recognition.This applies for example, to early/mid-career researchers, those from low- and middle-income countries, data collectors, and community members. The project brings together people who represent each of these groups. They hail from Africa, Latin America, South Asia and the UK. Using a series of stakeholder consultations through the use of open- ended questions, and meetings, they will agree on criteria for fair authorship. They will share their findings widely through blogs, publications, and infographics. Together, they will also publish a consensus statement on best practices along with actionable strategies.
Ultimately, this initiative aims to reshape global health research by prioritising inclusion, fairness, and representation across all research outputs.

Simona Manni and Lina Gega

The project aims to develop guidance for researchers and ethics committees about participant anonymity in participatory research so that anonymity is not imposed but able to be a decision that participants can make based on guidelines. This will be achieved through mapping existing participatory research networks at The University of York, and developing case studies around the positives and negatives of anonymity based on participants who have been involved in participatory research where anonymity was or wasn't imposed (both at Converge, York St. John University and The University of York). The project will host workshops to discuss different approaches with researchers, develop the framework and disseminate the information to the groups.

Dr Alexander Reid, Dr Amanda Hickey, Alice Bennett, and Lilian Joy

This project also received matched funding from UoY EDI Fund.

Students with disabilities often face challenges, such as anxieties, to being included in research. Meanwhile, conversations around disabilities can often feel awkward for people to engage with. This project looks to overcome barriers on both these fronts and improve accessibility to disabled students in research practice. In doing so, this will enable academia to draw upon the value of their abilities. This will be achieved through the development of a toolkit which will impart lessons on inclusivity of disabled students in research, as a document and, potentially, a website. This will be disseminated through networks at University of York and externally to make these insights available to others working in this space, including through conferences and personal networks. The toolkit will be reviewed annually to ensure long-term relevance.