A Continuing Professional Development programme by Design for Social Impact Lab — delivered in partnership with the University of East London and the University of Bristol, as part of the STAR project funded by the Office for Students and Research England.
This report documents the Research Design for Social Impact CPD programme delivered between 2023 and 2025 — and what it revealed about the state of UK civil society.
Known across cohorts as “Rebellious Research for Social Action,” the programme rejected the extractive logic of traditional research training. It was built on the conviction that communities are experts in their own lives; that knowledge systems shaped by colonialism and white supremacy must be actively challenged; and that research in the social sector should serve liberation, not compliance.
This report draws on participant feedback, cohort evaluation reports, facilitator reflections, application data from 202+ individuals, and feedback surveys across multiple cohorts. It is written for partners, funders, community organisations and practitioners who share the belief that evidence and research can — and must — be tools for structural change.
Traditional Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning (MERL) practices within civil society often reproduce the very inequities organisations claim to address. They centre funder accountability over community accountability, demand extractive “evidence” from under-resourced grassroots organisations, and draw from epistemologies that erase Indigenous, decolonial and community-held knowledge systems.
The STAR project sought to address this. DFSI Lab was commissioned to deliver a CPD strand that would equip practitioners, volunteers and activists in civil society with the conceptual frameworks, practical tools and critical consciousness to design research rooted in equity, care and social justice.
Global Majority and low-income scholars & practitioners in UK civil society — especially those without access to funded CPD.
Research skills, critical frameworks, decolonial methods, care-centred practice, and researcher identity.
Community of practice, peer solidarity, reduced isolation — conditions that let historically underserved researchers stay whole.
Confidence to enter, remain in, or advance in research; access to MRes & postgraduate pathways.
GM-produced knowledge reshaping what counts as evidence — long-term change in UK research culture.
Every cohort is built on eight principles that together define what rebellious research looks like in practice — not as abstract values, but as the working commitments that shape how we design every session, every exercise, every conversation.
Six cohorts delivered between October 2023 and September 2025 — the first two single-organisation, the remaining four mixed civil-society cohorts that significantly expanded reach, diversity and cross-sector learning.
Unlike traditional courses, this programme offered asynchronous participation via recorded sessions and the learning platform. Because the course does not operate on a “submission of work” model, completion figures should be read as indicative — reflecting diverse modes of engagement rather than failure. Cohort 2 (Newham Community Project) had 100% retention across 11 learners.
Over two years, the programme received 202 applications for 120 funded places — double oversubscription, despite very low circulation. This is not an anomaly. It is a signal.
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The applicants are not “emerging” practitioners. What unites them is not inexperience — it is the recognition that the frameworks they were trained in are insufficient, or actively harmful, for the communities they serve.
The most consistent message: mainstream MERL and research training fails to equip practitioners for work with communities experiencing structural oppression. Applicants describe feeling “trapped” by compliance-driven evaluation, funder extraction demands, and frameworks designed for institutions that do not reflect their communities.
I am really keen on changing the way we research in my current job. The current system has no voice for the people we are researching.
Monitoring and evaluation is designed around what funders want to measure rather than what communities actually need.
A substantial proportion of applicants ground their application in personal experience of marginalisation. Refugees describe wanting to use research to amplify the voices of their communities. Disabled practitioners describe inaccessible research cultures. Black women describe fighting institutional racism while trying to evidence impact in ways that feel true.
I am a refugee woman who has experienced first-hand what it means to be excluded from decision-making and research processes that shape our lives. This course feels like an opportunity to change that.
As a socio-economically disadvantaged, queer, disabled Black woman, I carry lived experience of layered oppressions into every space I enter.
Applicants describe being both subjects of extractive research and enforcers of it — expected to deliver compliance metrics that do not reflect real change. They are looking for practical, theoretically grounded alternatives — not critique alone, but tools for different practice.
Communities are mined for data, stories commodified, and the promise of solidarity reduced to outputs and KPIs which are inaccessible to the people it claims to centre.
Too often, “intersectionality” and “experts by experience” are invoked without substance. With fascism tightening its grip in the UK, I know the time to sharpen and expand my practice is now.
A striking proportion of applicants explicitly name financial precarity as a reason the funded nature of this programme matters. Many work for organisations without CPD budgets. Several have started and been forced to abandon postgraduate study due to financial constraints.
As a single mother who works with women in the community… I started a self-funding PhD but can no longer continue as a government doctoral loan does not cover bills and university fees.
As a freelancer, I do not typically have the benefit of organisational funding and referrals for professional development.
A growing cluster of applicants come grounded in decolonial theory, Black feminist scholarship, Indigenous knowledge frameworks, and abolitionist practice. They are not seeking an introduction — they are seeking a community of practice and practical tools for embedding these frameworks into everyday MERL work.
I want to integrate participatory, feminist, collaborative methodologies into my work — and name oppression and colonialism as present, not just sidestep those words because it might make others uncomfortable.
These organisations cluster around specific sites of structural struggle: racial justice, migration rights, disability liberation, economic justice, gender-based violence and community health equity. What unites them is a shared frustration with research and evidence cultures imposed by funders that do not reflect their communities.
The outcomes below synthesise evidence from anonymous feedback surveys across Cohorts 1–6 — organised not as bullets of competence but as the genuine shifts in thinking participants reported.
The foundational shift reported by nearly every participant: understanding research not as a neutral, technical activity but as a political one — embedded in histories of power, extraction and epistemic violence. This was not abstract critique; it changed how they looked at evaluation forms, funder requirements, and their own practice.
“It is not just understanding the concepts and history. It is also integrating anti-oppressive and anti-colonial approaches into every part of our work.”
“The training shifted my mindset.”
Intersectionality was consistently rated as the most impactful session. For many, the framework was familiar — but applying it to research design, data collection and analysis was new. The shift from concept to methodological commitment was significant.
“The intersectionality session was the most valuable — it is a missing part in our work.”
“The idea that intersectionality exists even within marginalised racialised communities is an eye-opener.”
Participants moved from a conception of participation as data collection to participation as co-design — involving communities from the very beginning in defining questions, designing methods, and co-interpreting findings.
“I used to think of participation mostly in terms of data collection and realise it is much bigger than that.”
“I plan to involve service users in establishing which factors they want to include — rather than reinforcing power imbalances.”
Session 3 consistently generated the deepest reflections. Participants described not just gaining new tools but confronting the ways their existing practice had unconsciously reproduced colonial patterns. Guest speakers from Global Majority academic backgrounds significantly deepened this session.
“I want to name oppression and colonialism as present, not sidestep those words because it might make others uncomfortable.”
The standalone Pedagogies of Care module was consistently named as one of the most distinctive elements of the programme — and one participants described as absent from every other CPD or research training they had encountered. Drawing on bell hooks, Adrienne Maree Brown, Tricia Hersey and Black feminist pedagogy, it explores rest as resistance, solidarity as methodology, and the ethics of care in research relationships.
“Co-design, anti-oppressive theory and method, pedagogies of care and solidarity — I appreciated the mix of theory and very practical tools.”
“A space to think deeply about how we can indirectly engage in oppressive approaches when researching — and solidarity building.”
The sessions that connected politics to practice — Photovoice, community cartography and co-analysis — were highly valued. The NCP cohort’s co-analysis session using the SHOWED method provoked some of the richest conversations of the programme.
“Photovoice will be one of my options of research going forward.”
“Co-analysis of data brings in nuance and supports an equitable narrative and outcomes for all.”
A theme running through all cohorts was the value of structured self-reflection — particularly exercises on positionality, privilege and researcher identity. For many, this was the first professional learning space that invited this kind of personal inquiry.
“To do social justice work, we need to start with knowing who we are as individuals and how we relate to other people.”
Participants cited the community of learners — across organisations, sectors and identities — as one of the most valuable dimensions of the course. Cross-pollination across maternity racial justice, refugee advocacy, housing and disability activism generated new thinking impossible in siloed professional networks.
“It stays with you in a way that other CPD courses do not. Connecting with others with the same mindset is so invigorating.”
“You come away with many inspiring ideas and tools as well as a community to continue the conversation with.”
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This year I have had a complete shift in mindset and worldview, and this course has been the first time I have been able to explore that in a structured way. It has been transformative.
A deliberate structural feature across Cohorts 3–6 was the integration of guest scholars from Black and Global Majority academic backgrounds — not a diversity gesture, but a strategic act of representation. Each scholar brought academic expertise and lived experience of the same racialised institutional barriers many participants were navigating.
London-based Black feminisms researcher and doctoral researcher on the Leverhulme Welfare, Citizenship and Intersectional Feminism Project at the University of Bristol — specialising in histories of Black women organising around welfare inequalities and reproductive justice.
Doctoral researcher at the University of Bristol examining health and social care commissioning datasets and their racial inequalities. Her session on QuantCrit and activist methodologies showed how quantitative data can be used for, not against, racial justice.
An Indigenous-rooted, working-class woman from the Global South. PhD student of Social Policy at the University of Bristol; research examines understandings of manhood within and without prison using art-based and decolonising methodologies.
Scholar-activist specialising in performance and social change. PhD from the University of Leeds on performances in prisons with incarcerated women in Zimbabwe. Cited by participants as delivering the single most impactful session of the programme.
Research on Notting Hill carnival as a form of resistance. Combines therapy with activism to create frameworks for healing justice; uses cultural storytelling to support voice within rights activism.
Facilitated a session on Afro Futurism as Qualitative Inquiry. Described by participants as “very practical, really useful — and inspiring,” grounding theoretical content in lived practice.
Part of the leadership team that designed the STAR project. Presented the MRes Social Justice programme pathway to cohort participants — creating a direct bridge between CPD and academic progression for Global Majority practitioners. Their presence signalled institutional endorsement and opened a door many participants had not previously considered.
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It’s hard to single out one session. They all made me realise how little I know about life, people, the world — in the very best of ways.
Drawn from anonymous post-course surveys across Cohorts 2–6, including a specific international feedback cohort.
Educating oneself on decolonial and anti-oppressive research methodologies that will help give back power to racialised and marginalised communities could not be easier or more enjoyable with this short course. Highly recommended for anyone hoping to inspire change in research design.
Thank you again for running such a fantastic course. I was so honoured to be selected and I can’t begin to explain how useful it’s been to me — to the point that I’m starting a new community research role!
Design for Social Impact is a great course for anyone considering participatory research. I am excited to be applying my learning to our community movement-building work.
Read carefully, six cohorts of data constitute a form of evidence about the state of social justice practice in the UK today. Four observations stand out.
Across cohorts, practitioners describe a profound tension between the evidence demands placed on civil society by funders and government, and the actual complexity of the social change they are pursuing. They are asked to prove impact in ways that erase community agency and reproduce harm. Practitioners are not saying “we don’t know how to do research.” They are saying “we know the research we have been taught to do is wrong.”
The breadth of applicant statements — spanning decolonial theory, Black feminist scholarship, disability justice, Indigenous epistemologies and abolitionist frameworks — reveals a sector undergoing a radical intellectual shift. Practitioners are reading Crenshaw, Tuhiwai Smith, Brown and Gilmore. They are not waiting for institutions to change — they are changing their practice themselves.
The majority of participants across all cohorts are from Global Majority (Black, Brown, Asian and otherwise racialised) communities. They are not passive recipients of research conducted about them — they are the researchers, evaluators, programme leads and community organisers insisting on research epistemologies that reflect their communities’ own ways of knowing.
The application data reveals a clear pattern: the practitioners most urgently in need of this learning are those least able to access conventional professional development. They work for under-resourced grassroots organisations. They are solo freelancers, volunteers, caregivers. The oversubscription of this programme is evidence of a structural failure in how the sector invests in the learning of the people closest to the communities it serves.
The programme did not merely talk about inclusion — it practised it. From the point of application, accessibility was built in. Trauma-informed practice was embedded in the architecture of every learning session.
A key deliverable: an open-access Resource Hub of eight practical guides available to any UK community organisation committed to anti-oppressive research practice. Licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
Why research design matters — the politics of evidence, knowledge production and community accountability.
How to design ethical research that centres care, dignity and safety — especially with communities that have experienced systemic harm.
How to design research that recognises overlapping identities — centring those at the margins and naming systems of oppression.
Photovoice, community cartography and other participatory methods where communities control the camera and the narrative.
How to move from consulting communities to co-creating research — design through analysis and dissemination.
How to analyse research data with your community, not just about them — turning participants into co-researchers.
Strategies for navigating funder demands for “evidence” while protecting community knowledge, dignity and power.
How to build knowledge practices that sustain your work beyond grant cycles and protect community stories from erasure.
◆ Resources draw on Black feminist scholars (Crenshaw, Lorde, Collins, hooks) · Indigenous scholars (Tuhiwai Smith, Wilson) · Participatory action researchers (Freire, Fals-Borda, Hall) · Disability justice activists (Mingus, Piepzna-Samarasinha).
Drawn from facilitator notes, post-cohort evaluations and participant feedback across all six cohorts.
When communities control the research process, define their own questions, and use findings to build power — research becomes an act of resistance.
The demand for this programme — 202 applications — is not just a metric. It is a reckoning. Across the UK social sector, practitioners working at the sharpest edge of social injustice are reaching for different tools, different frameworks, different ways of knowing. They are finding those tools here.
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These resources are offered in the spirit of solidarity, care and collective struggle. May they support your work in building a more just world.