Community Engagement and Participatory Research

Community engagement and participatory research are unifying themes in the Department’s research. This means doing research with people whose lives are directly affected by the questions being explored, rather than doing research on or for them.

We are particularly interested in research that enables the voices of people who are often silenced or marginalised to be heard. For example, the Department’s research includes the use of participatory approaches with mental health survivors, older people with dementia and carers with learning disabilities.

Projects

Building Participatory Research Capacity in Social Care. Principle Investigators: Kelly Hall and Caroline Jackson

Older People: care and self-funding experiences’ a research collaboration between Universities of Brighton, Birmingham and Lincoln, funded by Wellcome Trust. Principle Investigator: Denise Tanner.

Participatory approaches to developing practice responses to radicalisation within the West Midlands. Principle Investigators - Surinder Guru and Simon Haworth.

Research Management team, ‘Life, Death, Disability and the Human: Living Life to the Fullest’, University of Sheffield.

Staff

Dr Tarsem Singh Cooner

Associate Professor of Social Work
Department of Social Work and Social Care

Tarsem is an Associate Professor of Social Work and Director of Social Work programmes. His recent research has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Tarsem has been part of a team working on a project entitled ‘Organisations, staff support and the dynamics and quality of social work practice: A qualitative longitudinal study of child protection work’. As part ...

Telephone
+44(0)121 414 8184
Email
t.s.cooner@bham.ac.uk

Simon Haworth

Lecturer
Department of Social Work and Social Care

Simon Haworth recently joined the University of Birmingham as a Lecturer within the Department of Social Work and Social Care. He is involved in teaching on undergraduate, postgraduate and post qualifying programmes and currently undertaking a variety of projects for the West Midlands Social Work Teaching Partnership.

Prior to this appointment, Simon worked within the field of child protection ...

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 2935
Email
s.p.c.haworth@bham.ac.uk

Dawn River

Lecturer in Social Work
Department of Social Work and Social Care

Dawn is Lecturer and Erasmus and Study Abroad Lead in the Department of Social Work and Social Care. Dawn is also based within the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS) as the LGBT*Qi Lead and member of the teaching team on the Community and Practitioner Research Programme.

She is currently working on four research projects: ‘Queer Brexit: the migrant experience’; ...

Telephone
+44(0)121 414 2936
Email
d.h.river@bham.ac.uk

Dr Denise Tanner

Associate Professor of Social Work
Department of Social Work and Social Care

Denise Tanner is Associate Professor (Social Work). She teaches on BA and MA Social Work courses. Her areas of teaching and research interest include adult social work/social care policy and practice; social work with older people; social work skills; social perspectives of mental distress; and service user involvement in education and research.

Telephone
+44(0)121 414 2941
Email
d.l.tanner@bham.ac.uk

Publications

ESRC Festival of Social Science 2017 'Experiencing the social work world' exhibitions. Sheffield - 29th October-16th November; Edinburgh 11th November

Fawcett, B. (forthcoming) ‘Participatory Social Policy and Social Change: Exploring the Role of Social and Micro Enterprise in Health and Social Care’ in P. Beresford and S. Carr (eds) Social Policy First Hand, London: Routledge

Fawcett, B., Fillingham, J., Smojkis, M. and Ward, N. (forthcoming 2017) Service User and Carer Involvement in Health and Social Care: A Retrospective and Prospective Analysis, London: Routledge

Fawcett, B. (2016) ‘Social Work in Australia: Similarities as Differences’, in G. Palattiyil, D.Sidhva and M.Chakrabati (eds) Social Work in a Global Context: Issues and Challenges, London and New York, Sage.

Knowles, A., and Cooner, T.S. (2016) International Collaborative Learning Using Social Media to Learn about Social Work Ethics and Social Media. Social Work Education, 35(3) pp 260-270

Cooner, T.S. (2011) Learning to create enquiry-based blended learning designs: resources to develop interdisciplinary education. Social Work Education, 30(3) pp 312-330

Guru, S. (2010) Social Work and the ‘War on Terror’, British Journal of Social Work. 40(1) pp. 272-289. http://bjsw.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/1/272.full.pdf+html

Fawcett, B. and Hanlon, M (2009) The Return to Community Collaboration: Spatial Analysis and Social Entrepreneurship, Invited Article for Special Edition of the Australian Journal of Sociology, Vol 45 (4).

Also in 'research'

Department of Social Work and Social Care Research