All our research is conducted closely with the University of Brighton’s Centre of Resilience for Social Justice (CRSJ), one of its centres of research and enterprise excellence.
In the Boingboing, Resilience Revolution and CRSJ community there are lots of projects going on at any one time, and we’re always looking for more opportunities to engage with resilience research and practice that fits well with our Boingboing approach to resilience. So whether you’re a young person interested in being a co-researcher, a postgrad or postdoc looking for studentships and fellowships, an international researcher interested in a visiting fellowship scheme or an organisation interested in partnering or collaborating with us then do get in touch.
Here we offer an overview of some of our current and past projects with handy links to thriving areas of research within our community. In all our projects we aim to co-design, co-produce and co-deliver everything we do. We focus on resilience research and practice with a strong social justice emphasis, which means we seek to tackle disadvantage and bring genuine change to people’s lives around the world.
We are still continually questioning, enriching and developing our approach to resilience, and our priorities have shifted over time. We now have an increasing focus on challenging and changing unjust practices, systems and structures and are moving from research predominantly centred on children and young people to a broader range of those of us facing systemic disadvantage as well. Including, but not limited to, supporting the mental health and resilience of adults in recovery, ex-offenders, practitioners, adults with learning disabilities and more.
Through the Resilience Revolution we’ve learnt that activism has the power to build resilience and boost mental wellbeing, and this is reflected in our range of research projects that engage with activism through what we call ‘Activism for Resilience’ (A4R).
This includes a piece of research funded by the MRC/AHRC/ESRC Research Councils which was titled Nothing about us without us: civic activism as a mental health intervention and our more recently launched Activist in Residence project as well as a growing momentum around research on climate change, activism and mental health.
And all the while, we continue to refine and develop our core areas of research based on our ever popular Resilience Framework as well as our thriving Academic Resilience Approach.
Explore a range of our research projects:
Watch our workshops: how to do community co-research on health equity
Created as part of the ongoing Community Solutions for Health Equity project that Boingboing Foundation are proudly part of, we are pleased to share recordings of a series of workshops held recently in Blackpool. These workshops are free resources to be taken advantage of by any community members or organisations looking for a beginner’s guide to developing the research skills and knowledge needed to explore health inequalities in coastal areas.
The Research Ready Communities pilot continued
For the past year and a half Boingboing has been working on a Research Ready Communities pilot project in Blackpool alongside the National Institute for Health Research as part of their Under-served Communities programme. Typically, much of the funding for health research in the UK goes to universities in London, Oxford and Cambridge, but health research is needed the most in places like Blackpool, where the harmful impacts of health inequalities are worst felt.
The Boingboing Resilience Framework
The Resilience Framework is a handy table that summarises ‘what works’ when supporting children and young people’s resilience according to the Resilience Research base. The Resilience Framework forms a cornerstone of our research and practice. On this page we have pulled together lots of useful links so you can find out all about the Resilience Framework.
An introduction to the Research Ready Communities pilot
For the past year and a half Boingboing has been working on a Research Ready Communities pilot project in Blackpool alongside the National Institute for Health Research as part of their Under-served Communities programme. Typically, much of the funding for health research in the UK goes to universities in London, Oxford and Cambridge, but health research is needed the most in places like Blackpool, where the harmful impacts of health inequalities are worst felt.
Community Report – Climate Change and Mental Health
A full summary of findings from the research project ‘Climate change and mental health; A co-produced study with young people in Blackpool’.
Communication between autistic and non-autistic speakers: Gemma Williams introduces her fellowship research
Gemma is an autistic Early Career Researcher based at the Centre of Resilience for Social Justice, University of Brighton and a Boingboing volunteer. In this blog Gemma talks about her PhD research, and what she plans to do over the coming year of her fellowship under Prof. Angie Hart’s mentorship.
Academic Resilience Approach evaluation
This evaluation project explores ways to build the capacity of school staff and the commitment of school leaders and other key stakeholders to help them identify and implement specific resilience-based actions using the Academic Resilience Approach.
Resilience Revolution – Blackpool HeadStart
The Resilience Revolution has delivered an extensive programme of lasting change with disadvantaged young people in the town of Blackpool, through a successful £10.4 million Big Lottery HeadStart funding bid. Their work is based on research into resilience by Boingboing and the Centre of Resilience for Social Justice.
Nothing about us without us: civic activism as a mental health intervention
Through this research a team of co-researchers from different generations, professions and backgrounds will co-create knowledge regarding the role of innovative ‘glocal’ civic activism as a mechanism to strengthen young people’s mental health.
Secondary schools engagement with parents and carers: Project summary
Co-produced with parents and carers, the purpose of this research is to better understand what parents/carers in Blackpool think about how schools in their area engage with them and if schools can do more to improve this. We want to make sure that we provide the opportunity for parents/carers to voice their views and to help their children’s learning in school and at home.
How do employers best support ex-offenders’ resilience in the workplace: Project summary
Co-produced with a team of ex-offenders this research aims to understand the benefits of employing ex-offenders. We will share our findings with employers who have not yet considered employing ex-offenders as well as creating resources to help them understand what resilient moves they can make when employing ex-offenders.
How can patients, the public and health professionals work better together?
In this blog Debbie Hatfield, postdoctoral fellow with Boingboing and the Centre of Resilience for Social Justice, talks about her research and what she hopes it will achieve. Debbie’s work includes promoting and developing her PhD findings which looked at patient and public engagement and involvement for commissioning health services.
Climate change and mental health: Project summary
Co-produced with young people who are part of the Blackpool Resilience Revolution, this research examines how climate change affects the mental wellbeing of young people as well as co-developing resources that aim to increase resilience during climate change.
Self-funded PhD at the Centre of Resilience for Social Justice
If you want your PhD research to make a real difference then come and join us. The Centre of Resilience for Social Justice tackles disadvantage and brings genuine change to people’s lives around the world.
Our Academic Publications
This page presents an archive of selected published works from the Boingboing, Resilience Revolution and CRSJ community. This includes key academic papers, submissions of evidence and a few books relevant to the Boingboing approach to resilience.
United we stand Film: Youth perspectives on developing resilience to drought in South Africa
United we stand is a policy briefing paper produced by all the team members involved in the co-productive research project led by Professor Angie Hart on Youth perspectives on developing resilience to drought in South Africa.
Resilience among young people in a community affected by drought
The expertise of young South Africans in coping with drought is being harnessed for this co-productive research project. Our team is working with partners to understand what enables young people to withstand, adapt to, resist or challenge these impacts.
Cross-cultural investigation of resilience
This research project will investigate whether the Resilience Framework operates similarly or differently across diverse contexts in a cross-cultural study, and adapt the Resilience Framework for non-Western life orientations in multiple languages.
Co-production in promoting resilience – what does this mean for schools?
Co-production is a value-based approach that views people who use a service as assets with important knowledge and skills. It harnesses this experience, knowledge and skill to promote positive change, and design, produce and deliver better services.
The Imagine Programme
The Imagine Programme brings together different research projects working across universities and their local communities. Using the new knowledge we gather, we are imagining how communities might be different. We are researching, and experimenting with different forms of community-building that ignite imagination about the future and help to build resilience.
Our schools-based resilience projects
Our schools-based resilience research adapts the Resilience Framework for use in schools and helps schools make resilient moves across the whole school community. Many different types of school are working with us on this.
Resilience to re-offending: young men overcoming adversity
This practitioner research combines support work with young people who have experienced challenging times and the Resilience Framework. By examining the mechanisms that promoted resilience amongst young men who were offending, the study took the Resilience Framework and applied it to the data collected on the young men’s experiences.
Building resilience through community arts practice
The research project also involved a series of collaborative arts workshops in Brighton and Hove, with young people with moderate learning disabilities and young people facing mental health challenges. These workshops explored creativity and ideas of self and belonging.
Can kinship carers benefit from learning about resilience?
This is a Collaborative Action Research project using Photo-elicitation to represent kinship carers experiences of trying to use Resilient Therapy and individual interviews with children to find out what helps them through difficult times.
Adaptation of Resilient Therapy for adults with complex difficulties
Josh is an expert in adult mental health and is cutting his teeth on a related research project. His PhD applies ideas from the resilience evidence base to adult mental health, drawing on concepts more usually applied in this context – for example the recovery approach.
Evaluations of our resilience Communities of Practice
The project is evaluating the resilience Communities of Practice (CoPs). CoPs are one of the mechanisms we’re using to help practitioners, parents, students and academics learn about resilience and Resilient Therapy and put the ideas into practice.
Evaluation of aspects of our Resilience Learning Programme
Our Learning Programme includes the delivery of a range of information and training events and we currently evaluate different features to improve and develop the work further. It matters to us what people think, need and find useful.
Defining research
There is a huge amount of research on resilience. It’s an evidence base that covers resilience in relation to human beings (especially children and families) as well as topics such as community resilience and a whole load of areas from disaster relief to sustainable plant life. But first off, what do we mean by ‘research’?
Can resilience be measured?
Can resilience be measured? Finding adequate and good ways of measuring is important because we would like to track the effectiveness of resilient building approaches in daily practice, to make sure that people benefit from our interventions, check the quality of our work and continue developing our interventions.
Other resilience research resources
Resilience is a massive field and we’ve been in touch with various other groups doing work in this area over the years. Here’s a small list of other people we know doing work on resilience and links to their research resources.
